Bulawayo East MP Thabitha Khumalo has called for the re-run of the mobile voter registration exercise, arguing that a number of residents in her constituency were turned away while the registration points were too far apart.
Nduduzo Tshuma
Khumalo said in her constituency, there were only two mobile registration centres, one in Woodville and another in Waterford.
“The mobile registration points are few in my constituency and too far apart that it makes it hard for those staying in Selbourne Park to access them,” Khumalo said. “The few that have accessed the points have had difficulties especially tenants.
“Initially, they were required to bring proof of residence in the form of an affidavit from their landlords, but were later told to bring the landlords in person.”
Khumalo said it did not make sense that in Bulawayo there were 338 polling stations for the constitutional referendum polls, but only 24 mobile points were provided to the city for voter registration.
“The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) should redo the whole exercise because a lot of people failed to register.
“The other thing is that these mobile centres, actually the whole exercise, were never advertised to the members of the public,” Khumalo said. “The people need to know about these things when there is still time, but unfortunately not much was done to publicise this exercise.”
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Last week, Bulawayo civic society groups described the mobile voter registration exercise as a waste of resources, as there was an insufficient publicity drive on where prospective voters could register.
The civic groups described the exercise as shambolic and chaotic, saying this is cause for concern “as rigging of an election begins with such voter registration exercises”.
Mobile voter registration began on Monday last week after the government released $8 million for the exercise.
