By BEN R. ROSARIO
The much-touted biometrics electronics voting system in the House of Representatives plenary has been indefinitely put on hold following findings that technical glitches might prove to be damaging to legislative proceedings.
An Waray party-list Rep. Florencio Noel, a member of the reform committee formed by Speaker Prospero Nograles, said the House is not ready to use the 0,000 biometric voting as envisioned by former Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. after it failed two sets of testing conducted by the House technical committee.
Noel disclosed that during a test run, the system crashed when 230 congressional staff, acting as members of the lower chamber, cast their votes.
In another instance, 15 congressional staff, also acting as House members, logged in but only 14 registered.
The biometrics voting system was supposed to be installed last February.
"Definitely, the House is not yet ready to use the electronic voting," said Noel.
"The Speaker does not want to push it until the system is already fool-proof," he said.
However, Noel clarified the House leadership is not considering at this point in time the scrapping of the project inherited from the previous leadership.
Camarines Sur Rep Luis Villafuerte said the biometric voting may only speed up plenary voting but may prove to be ineffective in other aspects of legislative proceedings.
He also lambasted the biometric voting, reportedly funded with money coming from the Philippine Communication and Information Commission (PCIC), saying it is not only a total waste of money, but irrelevant to Congress as well.
"Even if it would totally be functional, it would still be useless as we still have to stand up to explain our votes. So what’s the use of voting electronically? It’s just doubling up our work," Vilafuerte explained.
What Congress needs, according to Villafuerte, is a complete database for all bills, resolutions, committee hearings and other related information and documents for every member of the House.
"What every member of the House needs is an easy access to bills and resolutions on related matters, the information on committee hearings and other pertinent information," Villafuerte added.
"If the House leadership could provide this, Congress would be more systematic and efficient," he said.
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