Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) plans to hire 50,000 technical support representatives for the automated elections in the May 2010 national and local polls.

With this, the consortium held a planning workshop which focused on the development of most-efficient methods of hiring, training, certification and mass deployment of personnel.

About 400 participants from the Commission on Elections (Comelec), the academe, IT organizations, manpower agencies and Smartmatic-Tim representatives joined the event, which was held last Nov. 5 to 7, 2009, at the Fontana Convention Center in Clark Freezone, Pampanga.

Bonifacio Belen, the consortium’s region manager, said that the poll automation would be one of the single biggest hiring jobs ever undertaken in the country. He was optimistic that the vacancies will be filled up.

“There is no shortage of patriotic and IT-savvy Filipinos who want to be part of history, he said.

The hiring of the technical support personnel will be the job of manpower firms Placewell, Manred and Ventureslink. They will be deployed on the ground for the elections.

The Comelec will be fielding one IT expert per city or municipality to oversee the precinct count optical scan (pcos) machines.

Meanwhile, Comelec chairman Jose Melo said that the first batch of the machines, 40,000 were scheduled to be delivered before the end of the year while the remaining balance or 42,200 machines would arrive in the country in January.

He said that only 78,000 pcos machines that are going to be utilized after many precincts were clustered.

The 82,000 machines are going to be manufactured in Shanghai, China. It will be utilized in the automated polls next year. (PNA)
RMA/FGP/utb