THE Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ), the state agency which administers elections here, confirmed yesterday it was ready for the 2007 general elections widely expected next month.

“We are as ready as we can be,” EOJ’s public education manager, Takeese Gilpin-Allen told the Observer in an interview on the readiness of the office which is headed by Danville Walker, director of elections.

The declaration of readiness by the EOJ, coming on the heels of a similar declaration last weekend by the ruling People’s National Party (PNP), means the way is now clear for Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to call the 15th general elections since ordinary Jamaicans got the right to vote at Adult Suffrage in 1944.

The Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the limping National Democratic Movement (NDM) also indicated at the weekend that they were ready for the polls.

Gilpin-Allen said the EOJ had recruited some 20,000 election day workers and had been pressing ahead with their training, even as it continued simulation exercises which are mock elections to test the preparedness of the EOJ staff.

“Most, if not all the requisite equipment, including laptops, scanners, printers and other accesories have been acquired,” she said, noting that the Voter Identification and Ballot Issuing System would be introduced in a number of constituencies.

Gilpin-Allen disclosed that the EOJ’s election centre which had been assembled last year, in anticipation of early elections, had not been dismantled and was ready to be put into action for the 2007 elections.

Some 1.3 million Jamaicans over the age of 18 years are eligible to vote on Election Day, based on the latest Voters List. Of the 14 general elections held so far, the PNP has won eight and the JLP six. But the JLP has registered the worst electoral beating when it took 50 of the 60 seats in the bruising October 1980 elections.

The PNP is seeking an unprecedented fifth consecutive term, having been in government continuously since 1989.