The meeting was attended besides others by Secretary Election Commission of Pakistan, Babar Yaqoob Fateh Muhammad, Additional Secretary Admin Fida Muhammad, Additional Secretary Training Zafar Iqbal and Provincial Election Commissioner Pir Maqbool Ahmed.
The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) said the monitoring wing will make full monitoring of every phase of the election at every place and will quickly submit its report to Election Commission and the role of regional election commissioners at division level would be of paramount importance.
He said directives have already been given to the Provincial Election Commissioners to visit all the offices of their respective provinces for effective co-ordination and work as a team. He said the ECP was making full preparations for election 2018 as it is very near and directed the officers and staff to prepare themselves for it. Raza said a comprehensive strategy has been prepared for training of officers and polling staff started on permanent basis at Federal Election Academy for the last few months, which would continue till 2018 general election. He directed the officers to complete data of all eligible staff and send it to ECP so that their professional training could be started from July 2017. He directed the officers to select upright, honest and hardworking persons so that they could perform the duties of national obligation in effective manner.
Raza underlined the need for more work in all those areas where women voters are less than male in electoral lists so that register eligible women voters could be included in voters lists. In this connection, NADRA has been requested to issue CNICs to women before their inclusion in the voters' lists. Work on reviewing of voters lists is being started soon and directed the staff to get ready for it besides for the situation that would emerged after completion of the ongoing sixth national and population census 2017.
He said that the entire nation was looking towards the ECP as Election 2018 is very near and the role of election officers and staff would be of paramount importance.
Raza said Results Management System (RMS) has been made compulsory and asked the staff to understand it fully for its effective utilisation in 2008 elections. District Voters Education Committees are being activated for which all necessary instructions were given to all the provincial election commissioners. He said polling staff and officers was being made answerable to the ECP besides efforts are underway to get financial and administrative autonomy.
The monthly meetings of planning committees of the ECP has been started so that the staff of KP can discuss important election related issues with Secretary and other officers of the ECP independently. He said the facilities like modern heavy duty vehicles, office furniture and others materials are being provided to the field officers to perfume their duties in most effective manner.
Later, briefing newsmen about the key decisions taken during the meeting, Secretary ECP Babar Yaqoob Fateh Muhammad said decisions regarding new delimitations or expansion in the existing delimitations would be made after analyzing the 6th Census Report 2017 likely to be shared with the Commission in July this year.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017