Financial Times

Migrant workers to monitor poll

Some 500 former migrant and potential migrant workers will function as People's Action For Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) monitors at next month's poll.

A spokesman for the Migrant Workers Centre (MSC), which is organising the migrant workers' involvement in the poll, said the group has been trained by PAFFREL and other human rights activists and will operate in all districts.

Among other work, they will essentially be checking whether election laws are violated, voters rights ensured and also that votes of migrant workers abroad are not used by others. PAFFREL, which has been allowed for the first time to monitor the poll from inside polling booths, is expected to use 20,000 volunteers for the exercise and a group of foreign monitors.

There have been reports of electoral fraud at previous polls where the votes of migrant workers have been cast - in their absence - by gangs supporting political parties. Some candidates have during house-to-house campaigning, asked inmates whether they had a member of the family who is abroad, but not given reasons why they needed this information, residents in Colombo said.

The MSC plans to go before the Parliamentary Select Committee, after the April 2 poll, and campaign for laws to ban rigging of votes of migrant workers abroad. Well-known members of Colombo's business community and professionals are also helping in the PAFFREL exercise.

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