IN a telephone interview with the Guyana Chronicle yesterday, GECOM Public Relations Officer Vishnu Persaud disclosed that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has recorded 31,370 newly registered persons in its fourth cycle of continuous registration, which concluded on Saturday, May 18, 2013.

He also said there were 4,614 changes or corrections to the data regarding those persons who were already registered, and that GECOM is currently preparing to send the fingerprints of those newly-registered persons overseas for cross-matching against those already in the system, in order to identify any case of multiple registration.
In such an eventuality, one of the instances of registration will be removed from the system; and once this process is done, the newly registered persons will then be added to the list of persons already registered in the previous cycles.
Persaud further explained that the National Identification Cards will then be produced and distributed, an exercise that is expected to commence in August of this year.
He said also that the fifth cycle of continuous registration is in the making, but this would be affected if local government elections are held this year.
The fourth cycle of continuous registration commenced on January 21 last, and GECOM had deployed mobile registration units to all far-flung and riverine areas in the country, in order to register persons who found it difficult to visit the GECOM offices.
GECOM has 27 permanent registration offices, but had set up an additional 49 temporary offices in the 10 administrative regions of Guyana during the period of registration. Those 14 years or older by June 30, 2013, who are eligible for registration, must be either Guyanese citizens by birth, descent or naturalization, or citizens from a Commonwealth country living in Guyana for one year or longer.