‘2.6 million new voters for 2010’

MANILA, Philippines – With two months left before the Oct. 31 deadline for voter’s registration, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has already recorded more than 2.6 million new voters.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said yesterday that a total of 2,653,594 new voters have registered for the 2010 local and national polls.

“We expect the number to even increase,” he added.

Jimenez attributed the huge turn out to the “active participation of media organizations and citizen’s groups in encouraging the youth to register, coupled with the Comelec’s intensified campaign to promote voter registration.”

The poll body estimates that the number of new registrants will reach four million, strengthening its voters’ pool of around 40 million in the 2007 mid-term election.

Meanwhile, Filipino overseas workers have until Aug. 31 to register for the May 2010 elections as overseas absentee voters.

The Department of Foreign Affairs-Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat (DFA-OAVS) disclosed that the number of new overseas absentee voter (OAV) registrants reached 200,637 as of Aug. 26.

SSS, Comelec plan single ID card

Meanwhile, the Social Security System (SSS) is in talks with the Comelec for wider coverage of the proposed single identification card which the government wants to put in place by the end of the year.

SSS president and chief executive officer Romulo Neri said the state pension fund for private workers wants to include the 48.3- million registered voters in the country in the coverage of the government’s so-called Unified Multipurpose Identification System (UMID).

Aside from the Comelec, SSS is also in talks with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for the use of the national ID card, Neri said.

SSS has already signed agreements with the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG) and the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) on the proposed national ID card.

SSS has over 27 million members while GSIS has 1.5 million. PhilHealth covers SSS and GSIS members while the Comelec has 48.3 million registered voters.

The unified identification system project aims to enhance the integrity of state-issued ID cards, facilitate government transactions, cut costs and minimize redundant databases.

Neri said SSS is still studying the “lowest calculated bid of P1.689 billion” submitted by the winning consortium led by information technology firm Stradcom Corp. for the production of 12 million cards. Losing bidders alleged that the Stradcom-led group should have been disqualified because they did not meet all the requirements.

The Stradcom group, Neri said, must produce at least 1,000 cards to satisfy the project’s technical specifications.

“We plan to conduct the testing at an independent facility in California in early September,” Neri said.

If the consortium fails in the post-qualification test, Neri said the joint venture headed by Banner Plasticards Inc. which submitted the second lowest bid of P2.189 billion would also undergo the same process.

SSS is the head agency in implementing the national ID system. –-Sheila Crisostomo (The Philippine Star) with Pia Lee-Brago and Iris Gonzales