Back to Index

This article participates on the following special index pages:

ZEC sets up logistics committee
The Herald (Zimbabwe)
February 26, 2008

http://allafrica.com/stories/200802260118.html

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has set up a National Logistics Committee to mobilise resources for the harmonised March 29 elections, as the voting date draws nearer.

Mr Utoile Silaigwana, the ZEC deputy chief elections operations officer, yesterday said the setting up of the committee was likely to be gazetted today. The committee comprises officials from ZEC, CMED, Public Service Commission, the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe, District Development Fund and the Air Force of Zimbabwe.

"There will also be provincial and district sub-committees which will report to the national committee. "Once the committees are gazetted, the national committee will go on a national tour next week as part of the election preparations," he said. Mr Silaigwana said ZEC would also start training constituency election officers today .

"The recruitment of presiding and polling officers will be done some time next month. "We are not expecting any problems in recruiting these officials as the law now allows us to recruit from statutory bodies like Zesa and National Railways of Zimbabwe instead of just limiting ourselves to civil servants as we used to in the past. "In fact, we had an overwhelming response when we were recruiting voter educators. We are also paying the voter educators their allowances on time," he said. In each rural ward, Mr Silaigwana said, ZEC has deployed four voter educators per ward while in urban areas there were two voter educators per ward. "The focus of the voter education exercise now is on the actual voting. The electorate is being sensitised of the fact that these are harmonised elections where voting will be ward based.

"So our voter educators are making sure people are aware of the ward boundaries and the voting procedure especially the fact that there will be four ballot papers so that they can choose a councillor, senator, Members of the House of Assembly and a President respectively," he said. Mr Silaigwana said there would be about 11 officials at each polling station with some of them ushering in the voters. "To ensure that there is no confusion the ballot papers for the councillor, senator, Member of the House of Assembly and President will be in different colours. "The ballot boxes will also have the same colours as the ballot papers to be cast into them. These will be advertised towards the election date to assist the public," he said.

He added that ZEC had started printing ballot papers while other election materials such as ballot boxes and voting booths were already being delivered to the districts. He said preparations for postal votes which are cast by those working in Zimbabwe's embassies as well as the police or soldiers on national assignment outside the country before the election day, were underway.

"We are not likely to have many postal votes from soldiers because they had been encouraged to register as voters in constituencies where they are working," said Mr Silaigwana. He dismissed reports that ZEC had no capacity to run the harmonised elections or that they might be postponed.

"We are funded through the Treasury and the money for the elections is available."

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP