EAC expresses grave concern about Register of Electors case
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The Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) today (April 9) made the following statement on a case in which the Registration and Electoral Office (REO) has not located a Register of Electors of a polling station located at SKH Tsing Yi Estate Ho Chak Wan Primary School in Kwai Tsing in the 2016 Legislative Council General Election:
The EAC expressed grave concern about the incident and tasked the REO to fully co-operate with the Police and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data on the investigations, and to follow up on the incident in a serious manner. Meanwhile, the REO must submit a detailed report to the EAC.
"It is highly undesirable that the REO has yet to recover a Register of Electors of the 2016 Legislative Council General Election and did not report the incident for more than two years. The EAC will conduct an independent investigation into the incident and make recommendations on improvements. The report is expected to be completed within eight weeks after commencement of the work," a spokesman for the EAC said.
"The REO must learn the lesson, conduct a serious review on the workflow and make improvements, especially on the internal communication mechanism, administrative and human resources management, training of REO staff and polling staff, the workflow in polling stations and verification procedures. The REO should develop more comprehensive and effective measures to protect information of electors and to prevent recurrence of similar incidents.
"A lot of manpower and resources are deployed whenever a public election is held by the REO. REO staff must strictly comply with the requirements of the legislation and the code of the Government and other relevant organisations on handling of personal data. It should be very cautious when handling and storing voter registration information, while upholding security and honesty as the paramount principle," the spokesman added.
Ends/Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Issued at HKT 17:21
Issued at HKT 17:21
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