Only 16% of 1M target register for OAV

MANILA, Philippines — A total of 159,100 new absentee voters have registered after six months under the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) registration, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) announced Tuesday.

The number represents only about 16 percent of the DFA’s target of one million registrants until the deadline on August 31 this year.

According to the DFA, the following Foreign Service Posts recorded the highest number of registrants: Hong Kong (16,332), Los Angeles (8,884), Dubai (8,602), Singapore (6,982), London (4,903), Riyadh (4,860), New York (4,484), Toronto (4,349), Tokyo (3,648), Jeddah (3,516), Washington D.C. (3,410), Brunei (3,164) and Chicago (3,114).

Another 3,434 new voters registered at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA), Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) have also garnered 36,658 new registrants while the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) in Taipei.

“The 2009 OAV registration will intensify in the final month of the on-going exercise as the various Filipino Community Organizations abroad and their leaders continue their cooperation, assistance and support to all the Foreign Service establishments and offices,” said Rafael Seguis, OAV secretariat chairman.

To encourage more Filipinos abroad to register, Seguis said that field and mobile registrations were scheduled to take place in many sites or venues worldwide in the last month of registration.

The OAV secretariat may still receive requests for such registration activities in the coming days.

To date, the OAVS has sent letters to 1,574 Filipino community organization leaders around the world. It has also continued to promote the on-going OAV exercise through the various media (print and broadcast) and similar forums being organized by civil society and non-government organizations.

Partylist lawmakers earlier filed a resolution to extend the period of registration to December 15 to allow more Filipinos abroad to register and participate in the election next year. –Lira Dalangin-Fernandez, INQUIRER.net