THE Independent Electoral and
Boundaries Commission has finally secured funds to start verifying the
Okoa Kenya referendum signatures.
The National Treasury has given the commission powers to spend up to Sh20 million for the process.
The money will be used to hire verification clerks, their supervisors and cater for their wages.
It will also hire a special room from where the verification exercise will be conducted.
IEBC chief executive Ezra Chiloba yesterday said the Treasury has given the commission authority to incur expenditure pending approval of the supplementary budget by Parliament.
“We have reached a deal with the Treasury and we are in agreement on the budget to verify Okoa Kenya signatures,” he said.
The commission has in the past said Cord complicated the work when it submitted the signatures in hard copy format.
It said this had doubled the work in verifying the signatures.
The commission has suggested that if all booklets submitted had copies and the signatures handed in soft copy, the work would be much faster, because it would have involved running the data against the BVR kits.
Chiloba said they plan to hire 120 clerks, with only nine days left to the expiry of the time within which IEBC should have done the job.
The constitution gives the commission 90 days to verify one million signatures.
Cord presented 1.4 million signatures on November 9 last year and the mandatory 90 days expires on February 9.
This means the commission has slightly more than a week to complete the task.
The National Treasury has given the commission powers to spend up to Sh20 million for the process.
The money will be used to hire verification clerks, their supervisors and cater for their wages.
It will also hire a special room from where the verification exercise will be conducted.
IEBC chief executive Ezra Chiloba yesterday said the Treasury has given the commission authority to incur expenditure pending approval of the supplementary budget by Parliament.
“We have reached a deal with the Treasury and we are in agreement on the budget to verify Okoa Kenya signatures,” he said.
The commission has in the past said Cord complicated the work when it submitted the signatures in hard copy format.
It said this had doubled the work in verifying the signatures.
The commission has suggested that if all booklets submitted had copies and the signatures handed in soft copy, the work would be much faster, because it would have involved running the data against the BVR kits.
Chiloba said they plan to hire 120 clerks, with only nine days left to the expiry of the time within which IEBC should have done the job.
The constitution gives the commission 90 days to verify one million signatures.
Cord presented 1.4 million signatures on November 9 last year and the mandatory 90 days expires on February 9.
This means the commission has slightly more than a week to complete the task.
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