The Commission on Elections today denied the allegations of a Filipino migrants' group who claimed that the poll body had been "sluggish" in approving applications for overseas absentee voters' (OAV) registration.

Migrante International was quoted Wednesday that the COMELEC's Resident Election Registration Board (RERB) have met only twice this year and that it has approved only 17,000 applications for OAV registration.

"The COMELEC's RERB have conducted five (5) hearings already; and contrary to the claims of Migrante, the RERB have acted upon 115,831 applications for OAV registration," said COMELEC spokesman James Jimenez.

He noted that the RERB have been meeting every month since April and that it will continue hearing OAV applications until October 2009.

The poll body's spokesman added that of the total number of applications heard by the RERB; only 4,302 OAV applications for registration were disapproved. High on top of the reasons why OAV applications of Filipino immigrants are disapproved, Jimenez said, is the applicant's refusal or failure to execute an affidavit to return to the country, three years after exercising his right to vote in absentia.

Jimenez said that as of August 26, 2009, a total of 201,328 have applied for OAV registration worldwide. The United States of America (USA) has the most number of OAV registrants, with 29,595; followed by China with 21,204 and United Arab Emirates (UAE) with 15,164. ###