By George Onah
Port Harcourt—Youth corps members conducting the voter registration exercise in five units in Port Harcourt refused to register people for some hours, Tuesday, protesting the non-payment of their feeding, transport and other allowances.

Vanguard, however, gathered that they grudgingly returned to their tables after the intervention of a top shot of the Independent National Electoral Commission who promised that the allowances were being sorted out and will be paid within the week.

Speaking with the corpers, who pleaded anonymity  at State Primary School Orogbum, State Primary School, Elekahia and St. Paul “D” Line they said INEC only paid each of them N2, 100 at the commencement of the exercise about 11 days ago.

Following their protest, yesterday, they said the commission, however promised to pay them 30 percent of the total allowances owed them for the period and that they were supposed to collect N400 per day for feeding the duration of the exercise.

But contacted, the state Resident Electoral Commissioner Mr. Aniedi Ikoiwak said the corpers had been paid the first and second installments of their allowances, stating that the problem stems from the refusal of the women and men to collect their money through the NYSC.

“The insisted on collecting the money directly from us and not through the NYSC authority and we told them that we cannot be carrying huge sum of money from rural areas to rural areas, they even said the money should not be paid through the bank into their account.

If you have over 9,000 people working for you and you have to pay them even N1,000 each, you are talking about millions and if you carry millions of naira and the money is snatched by armed robbers, how do you explain that and who will believe you”.

He said arrangement had been completed for the corpers to be paid all their allowances, stating that only a few of the corpers who have been intransigent on the mode of payment have complained and not majority of them who have been paid.