Blame biometric challenges on untrained personnel – Dr. Gedel

A consultant on biometric applications for the ruling National Democratic Congress, Dr. Ahmed Gedel is blaming the difficulties being encountered with the ongoing biometric registration exercise on climatic factors as well as the inadequate training of officials conducting the exercise.

He noted that because the kit operators were not “well trained” there are some lapses in their work.

According to him, he has observed that some kit operators keep piling pressure on the printers used for the registration exercise thus leading to their malfunctioning.

“Some of them (kit operators) instead of issuing one command for printing, some of them go to issue two, three, four and eventually the printer gets locked up because of too much information sent” Dr. Gedel said on Multi TV's political talk show, Majority Caucus.

He also raised concerns about the citing of some of the registration centers in the open which he said can affect the lifespan of the equipment.

“One other aspect we have also observed is that our polling stations are not well secured. Some of them you find them on the football pitch, under trees and what have you. Some of these machines were being constructed under experimental conditions abroad so you realise the temperatures they considered in making these operations are different from ours” a move he noted also accounts for the reported freezing of some of the registration machines.

“Much of the problems lie on two factors,” Dr. Gedel stated, explaining “the kit operators that are handling the equipment and where we place the equipment for registration. It is important for some of us to understand that some of these machines must be placed in a secure place.”

According to him, the “maximum number the machine is supposed to register is about 120 (but) some people are going 160” and wondered if at such rate, the registration machines will last for the 10 days required at each registration center.

“So it's important that if it can register 120, allow it to register the 120. We shouldn't put too much pressure on it” he stressed.