Director of Elections, Danville Walker

The Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) is encouraging civil servants and persons with at least one year tertiary level education to offer their services as Election Day workers.

Speaking recently at a JIS Think Tank, Director of Elections, Danville Walker, pointed out that the EOJ has been conducting recruitment exercises since September 2006 but some 3,500 recruits, mainly in Kingston and St. Andrew, are no longer available to work on Election Day, and the EOJ has been forced to once again fill these vacancies.

The new recruitment thrust, he said, commenced on June 1 and will conclude on June 30, 2007.

Mr. Walker noted that although only 1, 600 to 18,000 persons are needed on Election Day, the organization has to recruit some 20,000 people, 20 per cent of whom will be used as reserves. "When you recruit 20,000 people from September, all kinds of things can happen between then and now," he said, noting that the month in which the election is called affects the EOJ's readiness.

Giving the criteria for selection, Mr. Walker said that all interested applicants should be computer literate, trainable and must not be partisan. Successful applicants will undergo training in four to six specialized sessions for two hours each week, which is designed to sensitize them on Election Day procedures.

Being an Election Day worker is said to be lucrative and persons may pre-select the locations in which they want to work. Persons who are interested in becoming Election Day workers should collect application packages at the EOJ offices at 43 Duke Street, downtown Kingston; the Towers, New Kingston and Portmore Pines Plaza in Portmore