ARB draws up security plan

Source:
The National, Wednesday 16th 2012

THE Autonomous Region of Bougainville has drawn up a security plan for the general election.
With threat warnings in Bougainville, election manager Reitama Taravaru said they had been working closely with police on a security plan which was already in place. It will be implemented when the election starts.
“From our intelligence so far in the 33 constituencies, everyone is geared up to participate in the election,’’ he said.
“So far we have not received any threat or disturbance so voters can exercise their constitutional rights in a trouble-free election.”
Taravaru said all the rolls for the 33 constituencies in Bougainville had been completed and sent to Port Moresby for the compilation of the final roll.
“We are hopeful the rolls will be returned to returning officers and electoral office in Buka for use during nomination and voting.
“During the exercise, we have managed to record 144,000 voters compared to the figure we had in 2007 national election roll.
“We made a reduction of 3,000 from the total of 147,000 during the exercise after identifying a lot of ghost names, names of those who have transferred and the deceased.”
He was confident that with the job they did in the rolls update programme, the region now had a more realistic figure on the number of voters.
Candidates who have registered their bio-data Form 29 included seven contesting the regional seat, 10 for North Bougainville, 15 for Central Bougainville and 10 for South Bougainville.
He said with also some more bio-data still in the electoral office, the figure could increase. They were looking at 37 candidates for the four seats.
Taravaru said they had budgeted for K2 million for the election in the region.