Statement by the Supervisor of Elections

Mr Mohammed Saneem

FEO Introduces Birth Certificate Name Check Tool

Venue: FEO Media Centre

Date: 23/02/22

Time: 11am

In preparation for the Nationwide Voter Registration Drive and Know Your Election [KYE] campaign, the Fijian Elections Office [FEO] has prepared a Birth Certificate Name Check Tool so that voters who may not have a Birth Certificate with them can upgrade to the Blue VoterCard. The FEO has now managed to secure access to data from the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registry [BDM] which will enable our staff to carry out direct name verification of individuals in the field in case they do not have Birth Certificates.

This tool will only be able to locate you on the BDM data if you provide us with the exact name and spelling of the name together with your Date of Birth. If you provide us with spellings that are different, it will not locate you on the BDM data. That would mean you will have to provide your Birth Certificate.

This facility will greatly enhance the FEO’s capacity to conduct registration of voters and upgrading of VoterCards particularly in rural and maritime zones considering there is limited access to BDM services on a regular basis. These areas may also have connectivity issues as well.

Going forward, we advise that voters will still find it more convenient to bring their original or certified true copy of their Birth Certificates and in the event they don’t have it, the FEO staff will use the BC Name Check tool.

For the process of change of name, voters still have to produce their Birth Certificates. The FEO will continue to facilitate the change of name just as we have done till now.

We appreciate the efforts of the Ministry of Justice to facilitate the most convenient mechanism in assisting the general public to upgrade to the Blue VoterCard. This collaboration will create greater convenience for voters who may have lost their Birth Certificates and were hoping to upgrade to the Blue VoterCard.

The FEO will not be printing any Birth Certificates from the BC Name Check tool. It is a ‘view only’ tool of the data in the Births Register.

The FEO has, since 4 October 2021 until 01 February 2022, served 134,035 voters, which were made up of 64,550 males and 69,485 females. During this time, the FEO has facilitated 223 name change applications. 51- males, 172- females. In this regard, the FEO notes that 21,165 of the females who did not have names that matched with BDM records previously have already upgraded to the Blue VoterCard and their names are now verifiable against BDM data.

At this stage, the FEO has calculated that we are just over the 61% mark in terms of the total number of voters in Fiji that currently hold a Blue VoterCard.

We are pretty sure that based on the very high turnouts in January and going into February, we will surpass our target of 75% of registered voters with Blue-colored VoterCard by the end of the Nationwide Voter Registration Drive.

Before I conclude I just wanted to remind every Fijian that we will be doing a comprehensive voter registration bonanza in towns and cities around Fiji taking place on 26-27 February 2022.

The FEO teams will be present in all urban hotspots across all towns and cities in Fiji to allow every eligible voter to register and upgrade to the Blue VoterCard and since the Birth Certificate requirement has been relaxed and the chances of more Fijians coming up to upgrade to the new VoterCard, considering 2022 is an election year, has increased.

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