Statement by Stakeholder Awareness Coordinator

Mr Edwin Nand

Election Officials Recruitment Drive Phase II

01/12/2017 – FEO HQ

Bula vinaka ladies and gentlemen,

The Fijian Elections Office [FEO] will be conducting its second phase of Election Officials Recruitment during the months of December 2017 and January 2018.

This time around, we will be doing things a little differently – we have designed our schedules and deployment plans to target eligible Fijians living mostly in peri-urban and rural areas. There are two main reasons for this:

1. We want to ensure that there are sufficient Election Officials to staff all polling stations in rural areas – especially in locations from which we have received fewer applications.
2. We want to ensure that persons who could not attend the recruitment drive earlier are given an opportunity to do so. The FEO realizes the geographical challenges for voters living outside the urban areas, and this should not disqualify them from participating in what is a national exercise for all Fijians.

Ladies and gentlemen, a comprehensive plan has been prepared by our team for the second phase of recruitment and as an example, we will be visiting areas such as Naqali and Vunidawa in the interior of Naitasiri, Vatukoula in Tavua and Seaqaqa and Nabouwalu in Vanua Levu.

A more detailed schedule is available on the FEO website and Facebook pages, however given the geographic challenges, we have also partnered with various Provincial Councils to ensure that word gets out and that voters are prepared.

Our recruitment process has not changed and for the second phase we will still use the Election Officials Recruitment System and applicants will have to sit a Computer Based Test.

Phase II of the recruitment drive will run from 5^th December to 15^th December 2017, with the second round scheduled from 8^th January to 26^th January 2018.

As you are aware, the FEO initially announced that we are looking for 17, 000 Election Officials to work on Election Day and in round one of the exercise, we received 13,574 applications.

Looking at statistics from the first phase of recruitment, the total number of applicants who passed the test is 12,669.

10,113 applicants have completed training as of November 30, 2017.

We’ve also been unable to contact 661 applicants because we can’t get through to them on the mobile phone contact provided to the FEO. We would urge these persons to contact us on 1501 and quote their Application Reference number.

The number of applicants trained by Division as of November 30, 2017 are as follows:

As for teachers, we have received applications from 522 teachers as of 30^th November, 2017.

From the Central Division, we have 299 applications, 153 for the Western Division and 70 applications were received in the Northern Division.

Please note, we are targeting 300 applications from teachers per division.

Since this exercise ends on 02 December 2017, teachers who wish to apply can also visit one of our recruitment centres which will be open during Phase II.

School teachers will be our back-up staff for Polling Day and they must apply on our Election Official Recruitment System so we can have them sit the test and then be referred for training.

We encourage school teachers to apply quickly so that we can train them in January and not affect the school schedules next year.

For persons who missed out on the initial recruitment drive in July this year, now is your chance. Find your nearest recruitment venue, and show up with your VoterCard, FNPF Number, TIN Letter and Bank account details at our recruitment centres.

Also, we had some cases where applicants did not give their correct phone numbers and bank details.

All details of the second phase of recruitment will be available on the website and other platforms such as social media on:

fijielects2018.org.fj/eofficials/

www.facebook.com/Fijianelectionsoffice

www.facebook.com/FijiVotes2018

Thank you very much for your time ladies and gentlemen.