The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has revealed an impending reshuffle of its field officers nationwide after the Holy Week.

“They will be moved (because), they've been assigned in an area for over four years, or some of them have relatives running for any elective post in the locality,” Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said.

He said the move is apparently part of Comelec measures in preparation for the national and local elections this May. The nationwide reshuffle will take effect beginning April 5, Monday.

Talking about ballot printing, Larrazabal said the fifth printer, the Versamark 400 machine, that they rented from Switzerland has already arrived last week and it is now functional at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City.

The commissioner, however, said the new printer has yet to meet its maximum level when it comes to printing the ballots to be used for the automated elections.

“There are now five printers running at the NPO. It hasn’t hit the maximum production levels because it is still wrapping in the production,” he said.

So far, NPO printed at least 780, 808 ballots in 24 hours, which include the testing and sealing of ballots, following the recent arrival of the printing machine. Without testing and sealing, 860,000 ballots have been produced in a day.

As of early this week, the NPO still has to print the remaining 24,445, 224 ballots to meet its target deadline by April 25 of printing all the 50,723,734 ballots.

Furthermore, Comelec has started transfering the printed ballots from NPO to the Philpost Distribution Center in Del Pan, Manila to safeguard them.