ISLAMABAD, Sept 14: The Election Commission has prepared a comprehensive plan to train three lakh polling personnel to hold the forthcoming general elections on Oct 10 in an orderly manner.

The EC said the main objective of the training is to enhance the technical knowledge of the election management personnel at the district and polling station level.

The Commission explained that training sessions will address the needs of polling personnel, in particular those of the women staff.

The training is solely based on capacity-building in election administration, implementation of rules and trouble-shooting on the election day.

The training programme launched by the EC would be necessary to train the presiding officers and, to the extent possible, the assistant presiding officers, who would handle the polling booths within a polling station.

This would ensure that there is one trained person per polling booth who would be able to assist the other staff.

The EC also explained that at 70,000 polling stations, approximately 300,000 polling personnel will be needed to be trained.

The trainers, who are staff of the EC, along with professional trainers, are imparting training to master trainers who will then train the other polling staff.

The training is being conducted at the district and tehsil levels to the extent possible to facilitate the polling staff.

A schedule of training has been drawn up, based on polling stations, polling personnel, geographic considerations.

The Provincial Election Commissioners (PECs) have also identified “hard-to-reach” areas where it is necessary to conduct training through mobile teams.

The training manuals have been designed aesthetically to increase their utility and functionality.

The Commission stated that training over 300,000 polling personnel is a complex and huge task and completing it under normal circumstances in a short span of four weeks is exceedingly difficult.

The Commission said the entire training process has been converted into a documentary. Training sessions have been considered as a forum of reinforcing organizational values, staff welfare, and assistance matters as well as answering queries.

The relevant issues in the training include the integrity, impartiality, and professionalism of all staff; dealing with voters and the public in a polite and effective manner; learning of assigned duty stations; arrangements for transportation to and from their duty station; control and reconciliation of voting materials; voter identification and marking of voter lists or other voter attendance records.

The training is also to focus on how to deal with the unregistered persons wanting to vote; procedures for challenged voters or votes; secure and correct parcelling of materials; correct determination of valid ballots and (where relevant) voter preference markers; preparation of materials and setup of count area; function and use of count materials and equipment; rights and representatives of party and candidate representatives and independent observers at counts; counting and sorting procedures; assessing the validity of ballots, determining voter preference marks (where used), and treatment of challenges; problems that could arise during the count and the count and calculation of results.

Keeping in view past experience, the EC has also identified some areas where new procedures have been introduced that require re-training of staff; packaging of materials at close of count and other such problems have been included in the training programme.

The Training of Trainers (TOT) will be completed by Sept 15, Training of Polling Staff (TOS) will be completed by Oct 5 while TOT for the NWFP, Sindh, Balochistan and North Punjab has been completed. —APP