THE new 30-day mandatory voter registration and voter education exercise failed to take off yesterday due to funding challenges, NewsDay has learnt.
Report by Feluna Nleya
The processes that should run concurrently are now set to begin on Thursday, according to impeccable sources.
The exercise will be undertaken by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) and the Registrar of Voters as required by the new Constitution signed into law by President Robert Mugabe last month.
“At times government officials make political statements especially when it comes to disbursement of funds. There is no way we can start a process without funding,” the sources said.
Finance minister Tendai Biti last week said government had secured $25 million for the voter registration exercise.
Sources at Zec yesterday told NewsDay that the process of training voter educators who will be deployed to the relevant wards for the process was in progress. Zec will deploy two voter educators to each of the 1 958 wards.
“Training was conducted on June 1 and 2, and today (yesterday). It is being done in the provinces and tomorrow (today) and training will be conducted in the districts,” the source said.
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“The educators will be deployed by Wednesday (tomorrow) and should start educating on Thursday.”
Contacted for comment, Zec chief executive officer Lovemore Sekeramayi asked for questions in writing.
He had, however, not yet responded to the questions by the time of going to print. Voter education is aimed at sensitising people on the voter registration process. The mobile voter registration exercise which ended on May 19 was marred by chaos, resulting in thousands of potential voters failing to register.
At least 200 000 Zimbabweans registered as first-time voters during the mobile registration exercise though it became clear more potential voters failed to register.
