Charges filed against several officials of the National Printing Office will not in any way hamper its operations including the printing of the official ballots for use in the May elections, according to Malacañang.
“The officials involved have filed their respective motions for reconsideration before the Office of the Ombudsman and are awaiting resolution,” said Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr.
NPO, an attached agency of the Presidential Communications Office, is fully prepared to accept the final job order of the Commission on Elections for the printing of the official ballots, in time for the May polls, Coloma said.
Comelec will give NPO the job order by Feb. 8, 2016, said Coloma. The Comelec earlier moved the scheduled ballot printing from Feb. 1 to Feb. 8.
“If we may recall, in the May 2013 national elections, the NPO was able to print and deliver 52 million official ballots in just fifty seven [57] days, or three [3] weeks earlier than the target completion date set by Comelec,” Coloma said.
Due to operational efficiency, NPO completed the task at a printing cost that was P230 million lower than the estimated budget, he said.
Savings of up to P35 million were attained in terms of cost of paper and there was no need for Comelec to spend for the paper used in the printing of ballots for the barangay elections in October 2013, said Coloma.
The Comelec earlier moved the ballot printing schedule from Feb. 1 to Feb. 8.
Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said the the full commission agreed on it after a meeting yesterday.
Bautista claimed the poll body does not want to jeopardize preparations for the May 9 elections but had to move the schedule to a week later.
He appealed to the Supreme Court to close the oral arguments on the disqualification cases filed against Senator Grace Poe as the Comelec needs to finalize the list of candidates by Feb. 3.
A final list, he stressed, still needs to be loaded into the Election Management System along with the Project of Precincts, which contains information on polling precincts, including names of voters and candidates, at about the same time the printing starts at the National Printing Office in Quezon City using only three machines.
“We don’t have any contingency printers. The peak output is one million ballots a day. We expect to reach the peak on second or third week of printing,” he added.
The Comelec will need to print 57 million ballots – 54.3 million of which are for voters in the Philippines, 1.4 million for overseas absentee voters and one million for the final testing and sealing – by April 25 or about two weeks before the May 9 elections.