Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. inspecting the PCOS machine assembly plant in Cabuyao, Laguna. MATIKAS SANTOS/INQUIRER.net
CABUYAO, Laguna, Philippines—The Commission on Elections (Comelec) expects to finish the deployment of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines by the end of April.
Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. told reporters Friday during an inspection at the Comelec’s PCOS assembly facility in Cabuyao, Laguna, that deployment of the machines would be finished “on or before April 25.”
“One week before the scheduled final testing of PCOS machines everything should already be deployed,” Brillantes said.
The 30,000 square meter PCOS assembly facility in Cabuyao is where the PCOS machines for the 2013 May elections are being configured and tested.
About 19,000 PCOS machines are ready for deployment, said Celia Romero, director of Comelec’s Election Records, Statistics Department.
There will be at least 78,168 PCOS machines nationwide, one for each clustered precinct. There will also be one extra PCOS in each municipality as a contingency measure.
PCOS machines undergo several steps of configuration in five assembly lines in the facility, according to Director Jeanie Florita of the IT Department.
The CF Card, iButton, PCOS firmware, password, and other paraphernalia of each machine will be configured, assembled, and tested before being shipped out, Florita said.
Brillantes said that the facility initially only had two assembly lines but they increased it to five lines to speed up production.
He said they have started deploying machines on March 16. They are stored in several hubs throughout the country before they will be deployed to the provincial and municipal level.