Long lines were noticed at many of the Elections and Boundaries Commission offices throughout Trinidad yesterday.
Scores of disgruntled potential voters went the offices to get themselves registered for the May 24 election. Today is the last day to register as a voter. Yesterday, the Guardian visited the voter-registration offices in Tunapuna, Barataria, San Fernando and Chaguanas where potential voters complained that more manpower was needed to deal with the crowds or that the deadline to register should be extended past today. Brenda Ramdass said she had been in line at the Tunapuna administration office for most of the day and was appalled to see there was only one clerk at the counter. She said: "This is not service. This is sufferation. More manpower is needed."
She said a better system of customer service should have been put in place a long time ago to deal with voter-registration, not for just this election but for all in the past and the future. Another frustrated potential voter, Rasheed Khan, said the service was ridiculous, seeing that election was so close. Khan said he understood the EBC was in midst of training more staff but felt more could have been done to ease the congestion. He said either more staff should had been deployed by the EBC or the deadline for registration should have been extended. Khan also said lists of registered voters should had been posted at the EBC offices when the election date was announced to avoid unnecessary line-ups. Electoral officer at the Tunapuna registration office Devanand Dhanpaul said the turnout over the last two days was one of the biggest he had ever encountered. He did not comment on his staff's performance, but said they planned to deal with everyone who came in.
He said the problem was that over the last two days a "large pool" of people came in to register all at once – overwhelming their human resources. Dhanpaul said they were aiming again to serve everyone, right down to a person who came in at 5.59 pm. The situation at the Barataria office was very much the same with people lining up outside the building and around the corner. Salomi Crithon said she had been in line for more than four hours waiting for service. She said: "Better systems should have been put in place before hand to avoid this wait."Crithon and a few others complained that there was not enough staff to deal with the crowd. The crowd shared Crithon's opinion when she said: "More manpower is needed to deal with the amount of people." Electoral officer for the Barataria office David Mayers said since registration began last Monday about 300 people had come into the tiny office to register.