ECZ REGISTERS 1 MILLION VOTERS, STILL BEHIND SCHEDULE
The Electoral Commission of Zambia has announced that it has registered over 1.1 million voters across the country, despite experiencing significant setbacks during the first week of the exercise.
However, this still puts the ECZ significantly behind in its target to register 9 million voters by 12th December. By this point the commission should have registered over 2.1 million Zambians in order to remain on track.
Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Vice President Inonge Wina said the ECZ would only provide more data at the end of the registration exercise.
The vice president assured Zambians, however, that the ECZ would review the process at the end of each phase and that officers would be able to go out and register any voters who had been left out.
Meanwhile, PF district chairman for Kitwe Evaristo Chilufya has said that the situation there is “slowly improving” after the district struggled with major set backs to the registration process early on, including a lack of ECZ staff.
“We are engaging the ECZ and other stakeholders in trying to address the situation otherwise the process has improved and it is going on smoothly,” Mr Chilufya said.
The ECZ has recently taken drastic action to increase manpower at registration centres, including redeploying its voter education facilitators to understaffed centres.
However, concerns persist, with the Kitwe Pastors Fellowship worrying that the ECZ is still not acting fast enough.
Kitwe Pastors Fellowship chair Rev. Raddy Lewlia told ZANIS “The Electoral Commission should do something to improve the situation, otherwise the 9 million voter target will not be captured and a lot of people will not be able to vote, there is no way one person can be handling one person through all the stages taking over 30 minutes”.
He said he had visited registration centres across the district and that the situation was dire everywhere.
He called on the government to intervene in the situation before thousands of Zambians are potentially disenfranchised.