34, 000 Adhoc Staff Needed For Polls In Rivers -INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said no fewer than 34, 000 ad hoc staff were needed for the conduct of the general elections in Rivers State.
Already the commission said it had started training for some ad hoc staff recruited for the polls, noting more applications were still being received through the commission’s online portal.
INEC’s Director, Voter Education and Publicity in Rivers State, Chief Edwin Enabor, who disclosed this in Port Harcourt said that training of supervisors, presiding officers and other ad hoc staff was done in stages.
Enabor further said that the collation staff for the elections will be drawn from universities, while supervisory presiding officers are senior staff of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA’s), adding that members of the National youth Service Corps (NYSC) will serve as presiding officers in the elections.
According to him: “There are different categories of collation officers and the conditions stated for you to qualify to be on any category are very clear. We have the collation officers those are the university lecturers.
Their training will be sometime nearer to the elections. We are looking at close to 34, 000 in all that we are going to use for the elections.
“I think we will get that number because a lot of applications are coming in from online because the commission opened a portal for those who are wanted to work to apply and people have been applying. So we are going to make up that number,” Enabor stated.
He also disclosed that the commission has begun a door to door enlightenment programme to help voters understand the voting process and assured Rivers people that INEC was working towards achieving credible elections.
Enabor stated, “The materials are expected to have been given out to the supervisory presiding officers from the store a day to the election. They in turn will take those materials to the registration area centre where they are camped for the election along with the staff that they are supervising.
“And it is in that camp that they will be sharing out the materials maybe few hours to the election and then those materials are taking to the polling units,” he said.

Dennis Naku