KUCHING: Waking up at 5am on a Saturday when you could indulge in a sleep-in did not dampen the spirit of four colleagues from performing their duties as polling and vote counting clerks in the recent 15th general election at SJK (C) Chung Hua Pending here.
Despite having to sacrifice their sleep-in when many others were in their slumber at that hour, Lulu Law, Shusheel Kaur, Natasha Hezner and Aloysius Claudius were in fact anxious to perform their first ever duties as polling officers.
Relating her experience, Lulu said they had to be at the polling centre by 6am for the final preparation in setting up the polling stream or classroom.
“I had just come back from my working trip with Shusheel to Ba’kelalan the day before.
“Despite the exhaustion from the one-week trip, we told ourselves this is a very good experience that not everyone could have and too good to be missed,” said Lulu.
Shusheel meanwhile said the whole voting process was quite straight forward that all the voters knew what to do.
“Even when it comes to vote counting, all of us managed to do it pretty well without any problems.
“The polling agents from political parties were very cooperative too,” said Shusheel.
Natasha said she had to read out the name and identification number of every single voter who came to vote by going through the voters list.
“I just had to make sure that every detail is correct. The vote counting part is quite easy anyway,” said Natasha.
Aloysius said he had to accompany his senior colleague, Calvin Yeo who was the presiding officer on the eve of the election day to check on all the election materials at Dewan Masyarakat MBKS (Kuching South City Council).
“Luckily, Yeo is very experience as he had been an election agent before.
“Two of us had to be at the tallying centre after the whole election process before we could call it a day.
“It’s definitely a very long day, from 5am when we reached Dewan Masyarakat MBKS to almost 10pm before two of us were released by the returning officer after everything we submitted was verified.
“But, it’s worth the experience and no regret,” said Aloysious.
Yeo said he was glad that everything went well during the election day.
“The election process was very smooth and we did not encounter any problems which could disrupt the process.
“I must say the whole democratic process was conducted in a very matured manner and no untoward incident happened. This is something that all of us must be proud of as Malaysians,” said Yeo.
The five colleagues who work at Regional Corridor Development Authority (RECODA) do not mind to be involved again in future elections.
