Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) said on Wednesday that it had completed all necessary arrangements to ensure holding of general elections scheduled for July 25 in a smooth and organised manner.

“The logistic exercises are of two kinds: sensitive and non-sensitive. Sensitive logistic exercise involves ballot papers while non-sensitive includes deployment of official staff, formation of district monitoring teams and purchase of bags, pens, indelible ink and stamps in bulk,” ECP Spokesman Altaf Khan said. Explaining the sensitive logistic exercise, he said it involves import of the paper used for ballot papers from United Kingdom and France as well as printing of the ballot papers. About the non-sensitive logistic exercise, he said the commission has engaged around 750,000 employees from the federal and provincial departments for duty during the upcoming polls. He said the commission has also arranged adequate bags, pens, indelible ink and stamps to be used during the polling process.

The spokesman said that around 210 million ballot papers will be printed for all the constituencies of National Assembly as well as provincial assemblies. The process of printing of ballot papers will be completed by July 20, he said, and added that the plan for dispatch of ballot papers to around 85,000 polling stations across the country has already been prepared.

The spokesman said ballot papers to the far flung areas of Balochistan will be dispatched via airplanes. He said the process of transportation of ballot papers from Karachi is underway through C-130 planes, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and trucks. Pakistan Army is providing security to the Printing Corporation of Pakistan and other organizations involved in printing of the ballot papers, he added.

Published in Daily Times, July 5^th 2018.