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Runesu Gwidi Herald Correspondent

Mwenezi district, which is one of the remotest in Masvingo province, has come out tops in terms of the number of people who were assisted to vote during Monday’s harmonised elections.

Information from the final Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) voting statistics yesterday showed that more than 7 000 people were assisted to vote in the district’s two constituencies of Mwenezi East and West.

ZEC Masvingo deputy provincial elections officer Mr Maxwell Ncube said several reasons caused the number of assisted voters to spike in Mwenezi.

“A total of 7 499 voters in the entire district were assisted to vote by polling officers during the voting process,” he said.

“Among those assisted were people with visual impairments, the illiterate and the aged.”

He said second in having the highest number of assisted voters was Bikita District, which had 5 791 assisted voters.

Masvingo, with 5 694 assisted voters, was third highest followed by Zaka (5 662), Chiredzi (5 619), Gutu (5 445), while the least number of assisted voters was recorded in Chivi with 5 254.

“The provincial elections command centre did not receive any complaints from the assisted voters during and after the poll,” said Mr Ncube. “As ZEC, we applaud all the polling staff who worked in Mwenezi district for their effort to assist such a high number of people who required help to cast their ballot because of various challenges. It is also the absence of complaints relating to assisted voters, which shows that the environment was free for all the voters to express their will right up to the end of the voting exercise,” Mr Ncube said.