Zubair Qureshi
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has completed training of around 1.49 million electoral staff members for the successful conduct of Feb 8 general elections, which are now only four days away. The 87-dayt training covered not only smooth conduct of election, operating of the Election Management System (EMS), it also included security, shifting of election material as well as logistics.
In a statement, the ECP spokesperson on Saturday stated that a total of 27,676 training sessions, engaging 3,821 master trainers, were conducted across the country.
The training process kicked off on November 19, 2023 and concluded on February 3, 2024 spanning over a period of 87 days, the ECP spokesperson further said. It said the commission trained approximately 5,000 officers and data entry operators (DEOs) through 148 training sessions before integrating them with the returning officers.
Among those who received training included 144 District Returning Officers (DROs), 859 Returning Officers and a large number of polling staff such as 191,526 presiding officers and 785,060 senior assistant presiding officers. For them the ECP had organized thousands of training sessions covering almost entire steps involved in various stages of electioneering.
In addition to this, to ensure free, fair and transparent elections, the ECP has also organized training of 32 Regional Monitoring Coordinators (RMCs) and 1,336 District Monitoring Coordinators (DMCs). Around 148 trainings were organized for 5,000 offices and data operators to effectively run and monitor the Election Management System before their attachment with the ROs.
For security purposes 1,400 master trainers were also trained to provide further training to 503,495 security personnel to ensure foolproof security during the general elections, the statement said.
