Final phase of training for polling staff next week

Islamabad : The final phase of training of the polling staff in the capital city will begin early next week.

Most of the polling staff in Islamabad Capital Territory is taken from the local public sector educational institutions. According to an official in the know, the training sessions for 1,560 presiding officers and senior assistant presiding officers will take place from June 25 to July 10 to prepare them for the respective duties in the July 25 general elections.

It’s a two-day training in which various sessions will be held from 9am to 5pm with the master trainers explaining the duties of polling staff.

The venue for training in Islamabad is the Islamabad Model College for Boys (IMCB) F-8/4.

In the third phase held in the first week of May, 4,800 assistant presiding officers and polling officers had got training.

In March, the first phase of training was held in which officers of the Election Commission of Pakistan got training as lead trainers followed by training of master trainers in the second phase in April this year. During training, reference materials are provided to staff. In this respect ECP has printed booklets which are distributed among presiding officers, assistant presiding officers and polling officers. These booklets explain the methodology of polling duties.

Trained polling staff is the backbone of voting operations. President of the Federal Government College Teachers Association Professor Tahir Mahmood said the teachers were the backbone of entire election process.

He said the teachers underwent training, visited polling stations and offices of the returning officer before the election day, remained busy for facilitating voters and often faced very odd situations and law and order problems at polling stations.

"They (teachers) awake the whole night compiling the results at polling station away from their families, particularly females are in very vulnerable situations but when it comes to them, they are not treated like other government servants," he said.

Professor Tahir regretted that the teachers' promotion process was very slow.

"Promotions are kept pending deliberately," he said asking the authorities to ensure early corrective measures for the teachers' relief.