Gov. Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta has declared March 6 work-free day to enable civil servants collect their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) before the March 8 deadline.

The governor made the declaration on Wednesday at during the State Executive Council meeting in Asaba.

The pronouncement came after the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, Elder Aniede Ikiowak, led other staff members to demonstrate use of card reader at the meeting.

He urged INEC to extend the demonstration of the card readers across the state, especially the hard to reach areas to erase their doubts about the process.

According to the governor, a lot of people have doubts about the PVCs and the use of the card readers.

“I know there are a lot of people who are very apprehensive and what our people are saying is that you demonstrate the use of the card readers,” he said.

The governor said that based on INEC report, about 405,000 PVCs were yet to be distributed out of about 2.2 million printed for the state.

“And we have till Sunday to collect these cards. So, I have decided to make Friday work-free to enable the people to collect their PVC’s before Sunday,” he said.

Earlier, the REC explained that the use of card reader was arrived at in order for INEC to address the challenges and hitches of the 2011 elections.

He said the card reader was an innovation that would enable INEC to address issues of late arrival of materials to polling units and that of accreditation.

Ikiowak said the card reader had nothing to do with the voter’s level of education as trained staff of INEC would operate the machine to get the needed information.

According to him, the card reader is like any other tool employed by INEC to perfect the election process.

He said the commission would on Saturday demonstrate the use of the card reader to accredit some of the voters.

“With the card reader, election rigging would be checked.”

INEC has so far distributed 55,232, 875 PVCs nationwide. INEC National Commissioner, Dr. Chris Iyimoga, stated this yesterday in Abuja while briefing newsmen on the commission’s preparedness for the rescheduled elections. He said that the figure represented 80.24 per cent.

Iyimoga stated that the commission had also distributed enough smart card readers for all the pulling units (PUs) and voting points to the states with some redundancies.

•Pieced together from separate NAN reports. Photo shows PVCs.

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