'Urban voter registration difficult'

JAKARTA: The Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) admitted on Thursday that registering voters in urban areas was more challenging than in rural areas.

Toto E. Sastrasuanda, deputy head of the voter registration process told reporters here that people who lived in apartments were rarely available for registration.

"Most of them are unavailable during the week because they work many hours, and on the weekends, they go out of town on vacation," he said.

The General Elections Commission (KPU) contracted the BPS to conduct the nationwide census and the voter registration process in a bid to attain an integrated database on population for the aggregation on legislative numbers in each district for the upcoming general election.

Thus far, the BPS claimed that the voter registration process had reached about 65 percent of the process. The registration started on April 1 and is expected to finish on April 30.--JP