Mindanao power crisis won’t disrupt voters’ registration for 2016 polls—Comelec

Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes  INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday assured the public that the ongoing power crisis in Mindanao would not disrupt voters’ registration for the 2016 national and local elections.

Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes, in an interview with reporters, said that the election body has placed generator sets (gensets) on standby.

“We have gensets for each municipality and city. These machines are ready if needed,” he said.

Brillantes said that aside from gensets that could be used to address the power crisis, another 700 gensets  that the Comelec had distributed to the areas affected by supertyphoon “Yolanda” (Haiyan) in 2013 could be tapped.

Besides, the Comelec added, each voter registration machine (VRM) has been equipped with un-interruptible power supply (UPS) device.

A UPS is an apparatus that provides emergency power to a computer.

Mindanao is currently experiencing shortage of electricity that has led to daily outages of up to six hours.

The Comelec resumed last Tuesday the voter registration process for the May 2016 polls. This will be held until October 31, 2015.

It aims to register at least 9.6 million voters without biometrics data (consisting of digital fingerprints, photo and signature) as well as about three million people who will be 18 years old by the time of elections and will already be entitled to vote.