By Mary Judaline Partlow/PNA
DUMAGUETE CITY – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) here is now pre-positioning the Boards of Election Inspectors (BEIs) and the Board of Canvassers (BOC) with the deadline of submission of the final list set on January 31st.
Lawyer Gildu Agoncillo, the Election Officer of Dumaguete City, on Wednesday afternoon explained the need to constitute the BEIs for the upcoming May 13 mid-term election by the end of this month because they still have to undergo training afterward.
According to him, Dumaguete City has a total of 104 clustered precincts, with one BEI assigned to each one, composed of a chairman, a member, and a poll clerk, or a total of 312 people involved.
Agoncillo said the BEIs will be mostly, if not all, composed of teachers from the Department of Education (DepED) because they had already served in the previous elections and they are also the first option.
“Daghan ang sa BEI kay sila man ang mu serve sa election day (the BEIs have more people involved as they will be serving during the election) compared to the BOC, which is just composed of the election officer, the city fiscal, and a DepEd supervisor,” he said.
“Naa mi forms gipadala sa DepEd kay sila man ang mu suggest, kay kabalo man sila kinsa nag serve anang existing nga lugar (we have already sent forms to the DepEd for them to suggest who will be serving in the BEIs during the election as they are the ones who know who had already previously served in that existing area),” Agoncillo explained.
The city election officer, however, stressed that it is still the Comelec that will approve the final list of BEI members.
“Kami nag base ra sa nag serve last time but we don’t know if naa pa ba sila dire (we can only use as a basis the list of those who served in the last election but we don’t know if they are still with the Deped here),” he said.
Once the final list of BEIs is approved, the poll body will set the date for the training of the teachers sometime late February or early March on the procedures of the election, as well as the use of the automated machines, among other things, he added.
Meanwhile, Agoncillo said they still do not know what mode of payment will be used for the honorarium of teachers who will serve during the election.
Cash cards were used in the last election although it had encountered problems, which caused some delay in the payment of the honorarium for the BEIs, he said.
He believes that the cash cards will still be used but they have already made recommendations to lessen the requirements for the same.
