Surujbally rejects notion of racial imbalance at GECOM

Nov 13, 2015 News

“We have a procedure, we have a process. We do not employ Afro-Guyanese! We do not employ Indo-Guyanese! We employ Guyanese!” Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Dr Steve Surujbally said yesterday at a press conference while responding to claims that there was a serious ethnic imbalance at the Commission.
He was responding to a concern expressed by General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Clement Rohee that there was racial imbalance at GECOM. Rohee had also enquired whether GECOM had blacklisted anyone who would have performed questionably while working with the Secretariat in past elections.
Even though Surujbally acknowledged that there were a number of GECOM polling agents that might have worked in past elections for a political party, no evidence was produced showing that these persons had performed their duties questionably at the elections.
He stated that GECOM was provided with a list of 50 persons who had worked in the 2011 elections as party polling agents and also in the 2015 elections.
“This disturbs me in some way,” he said, but added that even though it was worthy of concern, he needed those names before the elections, not after.
“Nothing tells me on those fifty people or fifty-plus people where they erred, where they were miscreants, where they were vagabonds, where they did things that were inimical to the interest of a party – that is not part of the comment,” he charged.
He highlighted that at a recent meeting between a PPP delegation and GECOM, Rohee had insisted to know the ethnic ratio of some 12,000 persons who were employed by the Secretariat for the 2015 Elections.
Surujbally re-emphasized that there was no ethnic imbalance relative to persons employed by GECOM and that GECOM advertises positions “treated with the applications received, trained personnel and employed based on marks gained at the evaluations,” he said, insisting that ethnicity is not a factor that influences employment by GECOM.

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Surujbally rejects notion of racial imbalance at GECOM

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