16 October 2021

As at 4pm, on the 16th of October, the Fijian Elections Office has recorded a total of 33,665 engagements in our ad hoc voter registration drive resulting from changes in the law.

The registration drive started on the 4th October 2021 and it has seen 6,139 new registrations for the 2022 General Election.

When we started on 4 October, we had 5 teams in Suva VSC, 3 in Navua, 3 in Sigatoka, 2 in Lautoka and 2 in Labasa. Seeing the intense turnout from that day, the FEO had to very quickly, I must say, train and deploy additional staff and equipment to serve our voters by 12 October, the number of teams were vamped up to 27 teams in Suva, 24 teams in Nakasi, 17 in Nausori, 8 in Navua, 20 in Nadi, 9 in Lautoka, 3 in Ba, 3 in Rakiraki and 3 in Labasa. From 5 registration venues we upped the number of venues to 14 to cater for the high turnout.

On 14th October our Nakasi VSC recorded 1,456 customers. By then we had already prepared the VSCs to receive high density of customers and if you look at our FB page, the Nakasi VSC looked pretty empty.

The FEO also provides direct home visit services to voters that cannot visit our VSCs due to infirmity, age or illness. So far we have received 134 requests for central division, 29 for western division and 5 in the Northern division.

Our business house registration drive also received very positive response. As at today we have 39 appointments in the western division and 55 appointments in the central division. The business house registration drive will serve 8,696 voters.

The FEO also attended to 2 areas following complaints we received. First was in Galoa where we served 341 voters and another in Nadi where we served 23 voters.

So far the FEO has already facilitated 3 name change requests and 7 more have been forwarded to BDM for processing.

The FEO core team has been in the field for the last 13 days including weekends and public holidays. As such, the FEO’s registration drives at various centers will not be taking place tomorrow and on the public holiday on Monday. However, we will resume on Tuesday at various locations.

We will also be looking at opening up offices in Korovou as well, so that we can facilitate registration for those who visit Korovou town. Announcements on this will be made later.

We would like to heartily thank every voter and every Fijian who has turned up to our voter services centers in the last 12 days and taken advantage of our services. Our intention is to cover as much of the population as possible.

The FEO announced in 2019 that the green colored VoterCard will be expiring. Since then, the Electoral Commission has extended the expiry date of the green colored VoterCards. However, the green colored VoterCards are now expired. If you’re holding on to a green coloured VoterCard, you have to upgrade your VoterCard to the blue colored VoterCard.

One of the main features of the blue colored VoterCard is that your polling venue, the place where you have to vote on Election Day is directly written on the VoterCard. This will prevent you from having to look up where you’re supposed to vote or confusion around your name not appearing on the list. We urge all Fijians to upgrade to the blue VoterCard. Vinaka.

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