KINGSTON, Jamaica — Election day workers at the Mona High School in St Andrew Eastern scrambled to find a doctor shortly before eight this morning as a woman, who was waiting in one of the long lines there fainted.

“Any doctor in the line, any doctor or nurse in the line,” was the cry of the election day workers before a woman identified her self as a doctor moved to assist the woman.

Mona High School has nine polling divisions and is where Prime Minister Andrew Holness is scheduled to vote.

With COVID-19 protocols in place, voting has been extraordinarily slow with 83-year-old Cherry Neufville telling OBSERVER ONLINE that this is the slowest voting process she has experienced in her many years of participating in the process.

“I was here from seven o’clock and I just got through,” said Neufville minutes before eight o’clock.

She noted that there were no dedicated lines for senior citizens, forcing her to wait in a long line.

“I think it was easier before because four years ago I was much stronger than I am now and standing up was not such a problem,” added Neufville, who was at the polling station with her husband and adult daughter.

Several other people now waiting in line are complaining about the slow process, with one voter telling OBSERVER ONLINE that there was a problem with the fingerprint reading machine in his polling division.

OBSERVER ONLINE was unable to verify this claim, as under the Election Day protocols in place, electoral officials at polling stations are barred from providing information to media.

Arthur Hall