A COMMISSION on Elections (Comelec) official has ordered all election supervisors to coordinate with law enforcement agencies during site surveys.

Comelec Executive Director Jose Tolentino Jr. wants regional election directors and provincial election supervisors to assist Smartmatic-TIM teams that will conduct actual site survey of polling precincts.

“In areas with unstable peace and order, you are to coordinate with the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines to address primarily the security problems before proceeding with the activity,” read Tolentino’s memorandum.

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Site surveyors need protection because they will only be armed with phones.

Arnold Banogon, Smartmatic-TIM provincial coordinator for Cebu, showed Sun.Star Cebu the phone that site surveyors will use. It is a pocket computer operated by Windows. It has GPS and its own site survey application, which is not found in any other cellular phone.

Site surveyors will proceed to the polling precincts and assess the following: communication network for the transmission of election results, power supply, accessibility of polling places, and physical structure of canvassing and polling places.

In terms of communication, surveyors are to measure signal strength of Globe, Smart and Sun networks. Transmission within three minutes is considered “good,” between three and five minutes “fair,” longer than five minutes is “poor.”

Site survey starts tomorrow and can be done in three days or as long as as 25 days, depending on the area.

Two days

For Alcantara, site survey can be done in at least two days.

Boy Gonnie Neis, election assistant of the Comelec provincial office, said polling precincts are clustered. A cluster is composed of not more than five precincts and not more than a thousand voters.

In areas like Alcoy, Cordova, Santa Fe, Santander and Tudela, site surveys can be concluded in at least three days.

But for Cebu City-north district, it can go as long as 25 days.

Smartmatic-TIM has also activated the National Support Center, a call center to receive problems in the use of the Smart Phone, particularly the site survey application, during actual ocular inspection.

The same call center will assist voters during the elections.