Election work completed, says ECP

Says 149,000 staff trained to perform duties on Feb 8

ISLAMABAD:

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Saturday completed all preparations for the upcoming general elections, including the training of approximately 149,000 electoral staff members.

Over 120 million registered voters are poised to exercise their democratic right by casting votes for candidates participating in elections for the national and four provincial legislatures on February 8.

The ECP has established a network of 90,675 polling stations across the four provinces. Among these, 41,403 are combined polling stations; 25,320 cater specifically to male voters, and 23,952 are designated for female voters.
A diverse pool of candidates, totalling 5,121, are vying for seats in the National Assembly. This includes 4,807 male candidates, 312 female candidates, and two transgender candidates.

The upcoming elections will take place for 266 general seats in the National Assembly and 593 general seats across the four provincial assemblies.

On Saturday, the polls oversight authority announced the successful completion of the training of its electoral staff.

According to the ECP spokesperson, a total of 27,676 training sessions were conducted across the country by 3,821 master trainers.

Lasting up to 87 days, these sessions commenced on November 19, 2023, and concluded by the evening of February 3.

Participants in the training sessions included 144 District Returning Officers (DROs), 859 Returning Officers (ROs), and polling staff.

Among the polling staff were 191,526 Presiding Officers and Senior Assistant Presiding Officers (APOs), for whom 7,663 two-day training sessions were held. Additionally, 785,060 Assistant Presiding Officers (APOs) and polling staff attended 19,630 training sessions.

The ECP made necessary arrangements for training at the regional level, including the appointment of 32 Regional Monitoring Coordinators (RMCs) and 1,336 District Monitoring Officers (DMOs) and Monitoring Officers (MOs) at the district level under Section 234 of the Elections Act 2017.

Furthermore, to effectively operate the Election Management System (EMS), approximately 5,000 officers and data entry operators (DEOs) were provided with 148 training sessions. The ECP also prepared 1,400 master trainers, who subsequently provided necessary training to 503,495 security personnel, the statement added."