Voting cards to be distributed

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 January 1998, 23:59 GMT]
The Sri Lankan Elections Commission's branch in Jaffna will begin distributing poll cards to voters in the peninsula from January 18. Commission officials at the Jaffna Kachcheri say that people can obtain the cards by presenting their national identity cards at the government post offices in their areas.

The cards will be sent to Jaffna under special military escort from Colombo on January 16 Jaffna Kachcheri sources said that about 1200 persons expected to arrive from Colombo for election duties.

Although the number of officials required to handle the local polls under normal circumstances is more than 2000, the system of clustering several polling booths together has helped the government to conduct the elections with less volunteers.

The Sri Lankan Elections Commission has been in dire straits unable to find Tamil speaking volunteers in the government service to handle the Jaffna polls since nominations were filed for the elections last month.