FEO sees steady climb in registered voters

The Fijian Elections Office has seen a steady climb in the number of voters as we approach the 2022 General Elections.

FEO Director Operations, Anaseini Senimoli says as at 30th November, 2021 there are a total of 662,615 registered voters and their projection for the 2022 General Election is about 570,000 voters.

Senimoli says 50.02% of the registered voters are men while 49.98% are women.

She further says they have registered 14,376 new voters despite recording low voter engagement in the first 6 months of 2021 due to the pandemic and eventual lockdowns.

Senimoli says they also have a reporting mechanism in place where any person who has a relative or a family member that has passed away can notify the FEO so that they can remove those persons from the National Register of Voters.

She adds this service is available throughout the voter registration service centres in Fiji and is an ongoing exercise.

Senimoli says they carry out extensive data cleaning and verification exercises to ensure that the register is current, verifiable and free from multiple registration.

The Director Operations has also highlighted that the Central Division currently has the largest number of registered voters making up 42.9% of the National Register of Voters followed by the Western Division at 37.95%.

She adds the Northern Division makes up 14.38% while the Eastern Division makes up almost 3.5% and overseas voters make up 1.14% of the registered voters.

Director Corporate Services, Sanjeshwar Ram says their Toorak Office in Suva is now closed to the general public and all front-desk operations will be conducted from the Saint Stephen's Building in Victoria Parade, Suva.

He says their office in Toorak will become a back-end operations site for the 2022 General Elections from today and all voter registrations and amendments to voter cards will take place at various voter registration service centres across Fiji.