By Colleen Barilae – EM TV News, Lae
Lae’s Civil Registry office has registered up to 45,000 of Morobe’s population.
It comes as a wakeup call for the province to invest more on civil registrations for Morobe citizens in the lead up to next year’s general elections.
Morobe’s civil registration officer, Geibob Keputong, is the only registering officer on the ground that’s working on limited resources to update data from Morobe’s nine districts.
The Civil Registry office in Lae continues to complement the role of the electoral commission’s electoral roll updates.
But, it faces challenges in which slows down registration processes.
Geibob Keputong is currently the only officer on the ground who has been visiting districts and communities to collect information from Morobeans who may also be considered eligible voters in the coming elections.
But as he continues to carry his task, limited manpower, logistics and resources are obstacles.
He says, the country’s population increases by 240,000 every 10 years.
In Morobe, data given so far to the provincial Electoral Commission office come from just 50,000 people.
This makes it easier for the Electoral commission as the information provided identifies a person’s place of residency, a category of interest during voting.
The new office of civil registry in Lae is now the next hope for more registrations to be done in the remaining 12 months before the next general elections.
