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Blessings Chidakwa Correspondent
The poor road network in Mashonaland West Province has affected the ongoing Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) mop-up exercise, a senior (ZEC) official has said. At least 4 685 people have been registered in the province since the mop-up exercise started, bringing the figure of those registered since the blitz started last year to 525 435. Mashonaland West acting ZEC provincial elections officer Mr Austin Ndlovu said bad roads, especially in Makonde District, were causing frequent car breakdowns. “Our biggest challenge during this mop-up exercise is the issue of failing to access potential voters due to the poor road network in areas like Makonde District, especially during this rainy season period,” he said.

“One of our cars burst all tyres, and one can imagine such a situation. You can also imagine a scenario where our drivers have to drive at 10 kilometres per hour due to the bad state of our roads.” Mr Ndlovu said during the mop-up exercise, they were still facing similar challenges encountered during the first four phases of the BVR exercise.

He said there were a handful of people who still lacked proper documentation. “Our hands remain tied on the same challenges we are encountering,” said Mr Ndlovu.

“Despite the High Court ruling that allowed aliens to register to vote, the majority of them still lack the required long birth certificates. We also realised that a handful of bona fide citizens also lack national identification cards and we are insisting on those items as they have the required details, which validates the citizenship status of the applicant.”

The need to change over staff, Mr Ndlovu said, was likely to cause bottlenecks in the process. “We recruited people from various departments after we realised that for someone to spend the whole month away could also impart negatively on their core duties,” he said.

“Therefore, we decided to rotate them every 10 days. The main worry now is that during change overs, there was supposed to be a break of at least a day to cater for transport logistics. That may not be possible now.”