ALKHOBAR, 5 April 2004 — Filipino absentee voters in the Eastern Region will not have to travel all the way to the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh to cast their votes come April 11, thanks to the Saudi government.
Minister Counselor and Charge d’ Affaires Mariano Dumia announced the good news yesterday, saying the host government has allowed the embassy to put up a polling center at the International Philippine School in Alkhobar (IPSA).
“We are very happy that the Saudi government has allowed us to use IPSA for this coming elections and it will be beneficial to the Filipinos in the Eastern Region to cast their votes in Alkhobar than traveling to Riyadh,” Dumia told Arab News in a phone interview.
Last year, the host government also allowed the IPSA to be used as registration center for absentee voters.
The first Philippine absentee voting exercise begins on April 11 for land-based Overseas Filipino Workers, or OFWs. It started March 11 for seafarers.
Absentee voting ends on May 10, the date of election in the Philippines.
Dumia said an embassy team headed by Labor Attaché Delmer Cruz, head of the POLO-OWWA Eastern Region Operations, is in the thick of preparations for the voting exercise in Alkhobar.
Dumia also cited community leaders in the region for supporting the embassy all throughout.
According to Cruz, there will be six polling precincts to be set up in IPSA, each with three trained Special Board of Election Inspectors (SBEI) volunteers. Another 40 volunteers are now undergoing training for the manual counting.
Around 22,000 OFWs registered at IPSA from August to September last year but only about 18,000 applications have been approved by the Commission on Election in Manila.
Cruz said his office is accepting complaints from those who are not in the list of registered voters or who have not received their voter’s ID.
Last week, OFWs thronged IPSA complaining that either their names are not in the list or their voter’s ID cards were missing. Some complained that their IDs did not have their pictures or thumbmarks.
Cruz said what made verification work difficult was the Comelec list combining the Riyadh and IPSA registrants. He said they now have a new list with only the Alkhobar approved registrants listed by Comelec.
Cruz said the voter’s ID is no longer a requirement for voting. As long as one’s name is in the Comelec list, an OFW can vote, he said. The polling precincts at IPSA will open from 1-7 p.m. from Saturdays to Wednesdays and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every Thursdays and Fridays.