Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem.

The Fijian Elections Office has clarified the difference in data in the National Register of voters and a recent estimation done by the Fiji Bureau of Statistics.

Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem says as of June this year, the total number of voters on the National Register of Voters stands at 651,168.

Saneem says as of 31st December 2020, 650,081 people had registered.

This figure, he says contradicts that of the Fiji Bureau of Statistics which estimated that in the year 2019/2020, 570,327 people in Fiji were over the age of 18.

Saneem says there are some differences between census and population registration.

“Census firstly enumerates all people found by interviewers during the days of the exercise but omits absent from their place of residence. Population registration on the other hand is conducted over an extended time frame and does not register non-citizens residing in the country on a short-term basis.”

Saneem says the FEO collects its data continuously over four years and the census compromised data collected on a single day.

He says the Multinational Observer Group assesses that to maintain the voter register, the FEO methodology was robust as a result of the continuous updating and biometrics technology.