KABUL (Pajhwok): The Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Saturday announced completing 70 percent work, including talks with political parties, on the use of biometric system in upcoming elections.
The IEC also said it would soon announce its final stance on the matter. The announcement comes amid protests by political parties demanding the induction of biometric system for the October 20th polls.
Earlier, Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah said the biometric system would be introduced in the upcoming Wolesi Jirga polls and reservations of political parties and people would be addressed in this regard.
IEC spokesman Syed Hafeezullah Hashami assured the elections would take place on due time and logistic preparations in this regard had been completed.
 “Another development the IEC has been working on it is the introduction of casting vote through biometric system. Our study and evaluation of the system is underway.”
He  said 70 percent work on the issue had been done the remaining 30 percent work concerned technical and operational measures. “It is expected that in the coming two or three days, there will be solution to them as well,” he said.
He said after a final decision on biometric system, one package of biometric system would be dispatched to 5,100 polling centres and 21,000 stations country-wide.
Hashami said the biometric system was capable to take picture of a voter, his/her two finger prints and identify Tazkera and sticker in 40 seconds.
He added after completion of this process the same system would print another sticker for voters which will be stippled with the ballot paper. Hashami said the second sticker is readable only by the biometric system.
“This system belongs to a German company which could be made operational online and offline. It has 10 hours power storage with additional power bank which could supply the system electricity for another 71 hours.”
He said security was a huge issue for upcoming polls but assured that security forces were committed to ensuring security of elections.
He said information of 8.8 million persons had been entered to the database so far. Earlier the commission had said that over nine million persons have registered as voters for the upcoming polls.
nh/ma