NZ Commander confident ahead if election tasks

By Timothy Inifiri Jnr

Commander of the New Zealand Defence Force elections logistics taskforce for the upcoming General Elections this month, Colonel Anthony Childs is confident his 200-strong joint task force will deliver the tasks assigned to them by the Solomon Islands Electoral Commission (SIEC).

“So we’ve been given the tasks from SIEC and we have planned and mapped out those tasks and we have enough time to do them and we have enough capacity in terms of the number of ballot boxes”

“With that said so it is a difficult operating environment, the’re weather applications and the helicopters are technical machines so sometimes things can delay but given the professionalism and commitment of the task force, I’m confident that we’ll be able to do the job we’ve been assigned to do”, he said.

The contingent sailed into Honiara last week via the HMNZS Canterbury along with two Royal New Zealand Air Force NH90 helicopters, which will be used to assist SIEC to transport polling boxes and election officials to various locations.

“The helicopters are here to transport ballot boxes, personnel to their respective locations and it is such a agile asset, so it can launch from the ship, it can launch from land but then it can go to all the really remote areas and can land in quite tight confines orbit, can even winch down ballot boxes and personnel to even more remote areas which makes it a very useful asset”.

“There is a sort of around 200 of us across three different services including navy personnel who crew the ship, the airforce personnel who help operate, maintain and fly the helicopters and we got army personnel who fill a range of roles through commando control, logistics and some maintenance”.

“So we are working closley with the SIEC who has given us the task of delivering ballot boxes and personnel to the more remote areas throughout the Solomon Islands”, said Commando Childs.

Colonel Childs added that they are here in Honiara to support the entire election through to the end of this month.

“We could as well stay longer but at this stage the job we’ve been given  which is through to recovering the personnel and election papers to certain locations and we should have that complete by late April”, he added.

The Commander highlighted that there is quite a number of the contingent that this is  their first time in the country and assured that they will carry out their roles with plenty of professionalism and commitment.

“There are quite a number of the contingent that is the first time to the Solomon Islands, we do have a small number that were here last year that came to support the pacific Games but in terms of New Zealand’s contributions to the Solomons go back a long way”.

“We are here to help as much as we can to ensure that the process and that everyone gets the chance to vote in an open and free election and we’ll do that with much professionalism and commitment as we can”, he said.

Meanwhile SIEC has confirmed that almost 320 official candidates will be running for the national election including 19 women candidates.