More than four lakh government employees and school and college teachers prepared for election duty are expecting better facilities at polling stations.
Many people are reluctant to do election work because of the lack of facilities at the place where they live, the availability of food near the polling booth on polling day and the absence of transport services when the booth is located in a remote area.
One of the coordinators of JACTTO-GEO, G. Venkatesan said, “Although they are eligible for a postal vote after allocating a polling booth a day before the vote, they are usually busy figuring out how they can reach that place.” Some of them do not receive their postal ballots. When they cast their postal ballots, they should be paid the voting fee only after that. “
A teacher from a women’s college in the city said that many women employees expect to not be ready for election duty due to lack of wash room and accommodation near polling stations.
Another government employee said that the majority of them have chosen duties above 50 years of age and have high blood pressure and diabetes.
“Naturally, they have to eat on time. Instead of paying money, packets of breakfast and lunch can be made available to them through local bodies on the day of polling. Local police stations can take care of the needs of all policemen posted in their jurisdiction. “
“The Transport Department should operate special night buses for polling personnel, so that they are not abandoned after handing over EVMs and VVPATs to police personnel,” he said.
When Hindu Contacted the Chief Electoral Officer Satyavrat Sahu, he said, ‘We are very cautious on this. From time to time, we have been instructing to provide minimum facilities to our election machinery, which is the wish of the Election Commission… It is non-negotiable and we are ensuring that. “
“Even after this, if there are some cases or some deviations have been observed, we will be strict on that. We will ensure that all the facilities provided by the Commission are made available to the people involved in the election work, ”he said.
Only after demanding that government personnel be allowed to proceed on polling duty, they cast their postal ballots as some of them have not been able to collect them on time, Mr. Sahu said, adding that postal duties were handed over to government officials. Ballots were given in advance.
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