THE Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Defence and Home Affairs on Tuesday quizzed Manicaland provincial registrar Joyce Munamati over the presence of officials in Zanu PF party regalia at voter registration centres.
VENERANDA LANGA
The committee members are on tour of different provinces to investigate how the current voter registration exercise was being conducted.
MPs also observed that some political parties, including Zanu PF, were soliciting for support at voter registration centres. It also emerged that some registration officials were aspiring candidates eyeing political office at the next harmonised elections later this year.
Mbare MP Piniel Denga asked Munamati to explain why some registration officers wore political party regalia while registering potential voters.
“We have observed that some of your staff is actually putting on political party regalia while registering people as voters; what is the responsibility of politicians regarding voter registration?” Denga queried.
But, Munamati said if such incidents occurred the official would be immediately dismissed.
“This is a job for civil servants and political parties are not allowed to take part in the voter registration exercise, and where a civil servant is observed behaving in that manner we ask them to stop work immediately,” she said.
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Munamati said the province which has an influx of aliens from Mozambique had registered a number of them as voters as those who had Zimbabwean birth certificates and identity documents were now considered citizens.
At Kondo Primary School registration centre in Chipinge district, it emerged former aliens had to travel first to the immigration office at Mount Selinda to get clearance before registering as voters.
Chipinge district registrar Benjamin Madzivanyika told the committee chaired by Glen View South MP Paul Madzore that the former aliens first had to be cleared by immigration in order to be issued with Zimbabwean identity documents.
The former aliens told NewsDay that it would be difficult for them to travel to Mount Selinda as they had to fork out $15 in bus fares which was beyond the reach of many, something that would result in their being disenfranchised from voting.
According to Munamati, voter registration in most of the 260 wards in Manicaland province would take three to four days before the mobile teams move to the next ward.
“Those who will be left out by the mobile registration teams will have to travel to registration sub offices which will remain open for the 30-day period. The province is not experiencing a lot of challenges with generators and cameras because we were given a new consignment of eight cameras yesterday, but we still need more of those to cover all the teams,” she said.
Munamati said there were 29 teams to cover the province and their records as at June 16 showed 19 883 first-time voters were registered.
Senior citizens and people with disabilities in most of the centres visited by MPs complained they were struggling to register due to the long queues where they endured painful hours or days to get registered.
The Mutare provincial registrar said they had headaches registering polygamists from Apostolic sects in the area because some had eight to 10 wives and scores of children. It was time-consuming.
Districts covered by the Mutare Registrar-General’s Office were Mutasa, Nyanga, Makoni, Buhera, Mutare, Chipinge and Chimanimani.
