RAWALPINDI, April 18: Like the other staff of the City District Government Rawalpindi (CDGR), the sanitation department employees will also perform duties of polling officers on May 11, and their training will start on Friday.

The District Returning Officer had requested the CDGR to provide 20,000 personnel for election duties, and it has provided all the staff including sanitary supervisors and chief sanitary inspectors to perform duties as polling officers.

The training of nine chief sanitary inspectors and 58 sanitary supervisors of the garrison city will start in Gujar Khan and Rawal Town Municipal Administration (RTMA) offices.

According to the election plan, the CDGR assigned these duties to assistant commissioner, revenue officers (Patwaris), union council secretaries, health department, education officials and sanitation officials.

A total of 2,150 polling stations in the district have been divided into 20 sectors, and will be controlled by the main centre at the Commissioner’s Office.

Every personnel of Rescue 1122, health department, police and Wapda representatives will be present round the clock on the polling day.

Assistant Commissioners will arrange 300 vehicles for the transportation of 20,000 polling staff to their respective polling stations with ballot boxes and papers. The vehicles will be arranged three days before the polling day.

An official of the CDGR said the polling staff was being trained to provide ballot papers after verifying the identity of the voter through the Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC).

He said that the sanitary staff would perform the duties to check the verification of the voters and issue ballot papers after checking his vote in the electoral list.

He said the shortage of staff was the main reason for including the sanitary inspectors and supervisors to perform the duties.

“They can all read and write and check the original identity cards,” he said.

He admitted that due to their absence, the sanitation in the garrison city would suffer. However, he said the sanitary supervisors would be replaced by some senior sanitary worker in the respective union council.

When contacted, District Coordination Officer (DCO) Rashid Mehmood Langrial said the CDGR had provided the staff for the election duties.

He said the naib qasids were also provided for the duties at female polling stations to pick the election material.

He said the assistant commissioners and other senior officers would also perform duties, and the CDGR officials would be given training for that purpose, adding that the basic aim of the local government was to provide logistic support and staff to the election commission.