THE Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has acquired new biometric machines toward ensuring smooth and hitch-free conduct of the 2012 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

The new machines, according to the JAMB Registrar and Chief Executive, Professor ‘Dibu Ojerinde, would be deployed for the conduct of the forthcoming examinations and were technically faster than the ones used in 2011, as it took fraction of a second to verify a candidate.

Challenged by some problems encountered by the biometric system which was used for the 2011 UTME, Ojerinde expressed confidence that in 2012 UTME, “all will be fine.”

Public Relations Officer of the board, Mr Timothy Oyedeji, in a statement in Abuja, said Professor Ojerinde spoke after the launch of the pilot scheme at the Federal Government Girls’ College, Bwari, Abuja.

He noted that the new machines were easy and user-friendly, because all what was needed to operate it after connection was to enter the centre number, adding that this had made the validation of this new machines more accurate.

The registrar said the new machines had made the rigorous 2011 UTME validation procedure a thing of the past, adding that, “it is expected that it would take only 30 to 40 minutes to verify the entire 540 candidates registered in each centre.”