There are now 616,590 registered voters in the country

There are now 616,590 registered voters in the country after the recent National Voters Registration Drive.

While announcing the latest statistics on the National Voters Registration Drive, Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem says the total number of registered voters in March was 605,997 and the total number of new registered voters is 12,436. 

Saneem says the Fijian Elections Office has also confirmed and removed 9,156 registered voters that have been tagged as deceased.

He also highlighted that 258,849 people are registered in the Central Division, 230,058 in the Western Division, the Northern Division has 94,577 registered voters while 26,836 people are registered in the Eastern Division.

Saneem says that during the National Voters Registration Drive they were also able to conduct 32 home visits for persons who could not make it to the venue of the drive.

He says voter registration is also conducted overseas and reiterated that the major registration drive for those overseas will take place on Fiji Day.

The total number of registered voters overseas now stands at 6,270.

The Supervisor of Elections has also encouraged political parties, stakeholders and voters to ensure that the information they publish or rely on has been correctly stated and obtained from authentic sources.

He highlighted this after a social media issue was brought to their attention where a person who claimed to be a chief volunteer for a political party had compiled and published a concocted table of registered voters in Fiji of upto 800,000.

Saneem has stressed that any elections information must be verified. 

Saneem also highlighted that at the end of the Nationwide Voter Registration Drive, the Fijian Elections Office had recorded over 240,000 engagements with the voters.