Comelec-NCR has enough computers but not office supplies

The Commission on Elections-National Capital Region (Comelec-NCR) has more than enough computers for the 2004 elections but may not have enough office supplies to continue with the ongoing registration and validation of voters.

Comelec-NCR director Ferdinand Rafanan said that despite repeated requests from the Comelec head office, there is a shortage of typewriting papers at their 260 registration and validation centers in the metropolis’ 17 cities and municipalities.

As a result, in one of registration centers in Caloocan applicants were reportedly required to pay the application forms at P2 per page.

"That is not allowed," Rafanan stressed. "We ask people for their taxes to fund the elections and yet during registration, it is still them who pay for the forms. I do not think that is right," Rafanan told reporters during an interview over the weekend.

He clarified that he gave the Caloocan center P200 out of his own pocket to pay for its paper supplies for three days.

"Office supplies at the Comelec have been like that since I became NCR director," said the obviously irate NCR elections chief. "How come we spend hundreds of millions on other things and yet not have enough office supplies?"

Rafanan said this is also going to affect the 11,715 individual petitions for exclusion they will file against double and triple registrants in various courts in the metropolis. For these petitions alone, he said they need 100 reams of bond paper.

He clarified though that Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos is supportive of the filing of petitions but the supplies are coming in trickles.

Comelec officials explained that there is not enough supply stock since they plan to purchase in bulk rather than on a demand basis to save money.

Rafanan, however, gave credit to Abalos for purchasing some 4,000 computers for the coming elections.

About 260 of these computers are already being used in Metro Manila for the registration and validation but the rest are still set to be distributed to various parts of the country.

The new computers replaced NCR’s seven-year-old slow-processing computers, more than half of which are no longer working.