Electoral Commission - Voters’ census set for August |22 June 2017

• Pilot exercise to be done in the district of Takamaka tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday

A voters’ census will be carried out in August this year, the Electoral Commission of Seychelles (ECS) announced yesterday.

Meanwhile, a pilot exercise will be conducted in the district of Takamaka tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday with 40 officers on the field to test the new questionnaire.

The census proper in August will involve some 500 officers on the field to gather all the information from the inhabitants in all the districts.

The announcement was made yesterday by the chairman of the ECS Hendrick Gappy and his team at their headquarters at the National Library.
“After the elections in 2015 and 2016, the ECS met the various political parties and realised the necessity to relook at the voters list. Since then the ECS made it its prime task to accomplish this and a budget of R3 million was approved to execute this task. Our mandate is to gather as much info as possible on the inhabitants, Seychellois and non-Seychellois. This will be a door to door activity in order not to miss any detail,” explained Mr Gappy.

What will the information collected be used for? “As we already mentioned, the Electoral Commission is working closely with all the main stakeholders and we will have to see if a new list of voters will be drafted or we will update the existing one. Once all data is collected, by November we will be able to produce a report. Then all the stakeholders and even the public will be able to analyse the report and give their suggestions. We, including the politicians, have homework to do. Before the end of the year we hope to come up with a final decision,” noted Mr Gappy.

Another important element noted by Mr Gappy is that the voters’ survey does not replace the voters’ registry at the Electoral Commission. “These are two different exercises and each responsible voter should register themselves with the Commission.”

Elena de Letourdie, deputy CEO of the Statistics Bureau, gave more explanations on how this process will go. “Our role is to give the technical support to the Electoral Commission. For such a big exercise, we have to prepare ourselves and that’s why we are doing a pilot exercise this weekend. On June 16-17 some forty officers were trained on how to use the new questionnaire. We chose the district of Takamaka because of its topology and the size of its population. We are calling on the people of Takamaka to cooperate with our officers, to be at home this weekend and to make sure to keep their dogs away from our officers. We urge the public to answer the questions with frankness and before attending to any officer, please ask them for their identity badge from our office. It is an offence not to answer the questions and we count on the cooperation of the public.”

To become one of the voters’ census officers, you will have the chance to apply for the post closer to the time. All those retained will have to go through training and those who are able to handle the test will be recruited for the task.

Also present at the press conference were Beatty Hoareau, Bernard Elizabeth and Lorna Lepathy.