Citizenship Minister Winston Felix on Monday promised to launch an immediate investigation into allegations by the opposition People’s Progressive Party that there was ongoing fraud at the General Register Office (GRO).
The PPP claims that there are early attempts by the APNU+AFC administration to rig the 2020 elections in its favour.
PPP General Secretary Clement Rohee claims that thousands of birth records are being revised daily at the GRO and that there was collaboration with the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to generate a fraudulent voter’s list to be used for the 2020 elections.
But Felix said the accusations by Rohee seemed untrue to him.
“I don’t know about any revision. The record is the record.” Felix said as he promised to investigate the specifics of the allegations.
He said he was also unaware of any collaboration between the GRO and GECOM but said if any exists it would have been there since Rohee held responsibility for the operations of the GRO as Home Affairs Minister.
Rohee said the PPP’s concerns over the operations of the Ministry of Citizenship and GRO were growing and claimed that the GRO has introduced a new system to control the issuance of birth certificates which are used as source documents for obtaining a Nation Identification Card at GECOM.
The PPP General Secretary said the collaboration between the two were geared at generating a fraudulent voter’s list by keeping the names of dead persons on the list and issuing underage persons with fake birth certificates.
“The PPP continues to raise concerns about plans being make to rig the 2020 elections in the favour of the APNU+AFC,” Rohee added.
Rohee said the link between birth certificates and elections was established by Felix when he made public comments recently.
The PPP also raised concerns over hiring of Patrick Triumph as a UNICEF consultant at the Ministry of the Citizenship, saying that nothing was known of Triumph’s group and his hiring was done in secret.
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