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Walter Mswazie Masvingo Correspondent
More than 300 000 voters have so far been registered by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) in Masvingo under the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) exercise. The second phase of the registration blitz across the province officially ended on Monday. ZEC provincial election officer Mr Zex Pudurayi said according to figures from the second blitz, more females had registered to vote compared to their male counterparts, suggesting that women were eager to exercise their democratic right to vote. He said the commission faced challenges over the proof of residence requirement, which he, however, said has since been addressed by the conferment of Commissioner of Oath status on supervisors.

“The second blitz has seen ZEC registering 304 896 voters to date. This is a cumulative figure that includes 122 000 voters registered under the first blitz,” said Mr Pudurayi. He said some voters were turned away without registering as they did not have the required documents. Others were disqualified because they had not yet reached the stipulated age to register.

“We turned away 7 557 people because some had expired passports, while others were aliens. Among those turned away, some had no proof of residence and they could not register. We also had a number of cases where children who have not attained the legal age of 18 visited our stations wanting to register,” he said. ZEC has also dispatched another group of 152 voter educators in Bikita West and Gutu district in preparationforcthe third phase of the registration blitz.

“It seems we have more females registering than their male counterparts. Among the 304 896 registered voters, 174 199 are women, while 130 697 are men. This means we have a few men who want to exercise their democratic rights than women,” he said.

“We have deployed yet another group of 152 voter educators to 330 centres in readiness for the third blitz set to begin on Wednesday. As I speak, the officers are being transported to their respective stations. They will be there for yet another 16 days before we deploy another group to Zaka and rest of Bikita, for the fourth and final blitz.”