THE Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) in Cebu will receive their honoraria from the national government, the provincial Commission on Elections (Comelec) said yesterday.
Acting Comelec provincial supervisor Eliseo Labaria said while the Cebu City government may be delayed in giving honoraria to their BEIs, that doesn’t include the national government’s allocation.
“The Comelec has a separate disbursement and that is through prepaid cards,” he told reporters yesterday.
Labaria said after next week’s elections and once the BEIs return polling paraphernalia to their respective election officers, they will each be given a prepaid card accompanied with a pin code.
Labaria said the prepaid cards will be used to withdraw their honoraria from ATMs of the Landbank of the Philippines. He said each BEI member will receive at least P5,000, but he heard unconfirmed reports that this amount has been raised.
In the province, including Cebu City, there are over 12,000 public school teachers who will serve as BEIs on election day. Like Cebu City, all other local governments in the province of Cebu may also provide incentives to their BEIs such as transport allowance or any other form of compensation for their services.
In related news, over 4,000 vote-counting machines (VCMs) were delivered by cargo forwarder 2GO to local government units in the province starting with the towns on Camotes and Bantayan islands yesterday.
Labaria said the forwarder will deliver the rest of the units to mainland towns today.