Cameroon prepares for biometric voter system

BOARD members of the Elections Cameroon (Elecam) are in the field across the country for a series of sensitization meetings with elections stake holders on the soon to be introduced biometric system of registration.“The individual’s finger print, picture, names, parentage, place of birth, occupation and domicile will be carried on the new voters’ card,” said Samuel Fonkam Azu’u, board chair of Elecam as he led a delegation to the Northwest part of the Central African Nation. “It would take less than five minutes to register each voter,” said Fonkam while meeting with political parties, civil society organizations, administrators, religious and traditional authorities and pressmen last week.Giesecke Cid, a German service provider which was contracted last April by Cameroonian authorities will provide the election materials and training of Elecam’s personnel within the next three months. The elections body targets registering a minimum of 7 million voters within a seven months period once the materials are in place. In all, 1,200 kits would be supplied, each comprising of a laptop, camera, scanner and a fingerprint recorder. Three kits would be given to each of the 363 council areas of the country.Opposition parties, civil society organizations and international development partners have been piling pressure on Elecam to adopt the biometric system as a way of curbing fraud and double registration. The National Assembly in March passed a bill codifying the country’s electoral laws into a single code. This came at the tail of several reforms geared towards rendering the electoral process in Cameroon more credible and transparent. These changes have necessitated a complete recompilation of the electoral register to begin in two months.