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Zimbabwe's Elections 2013 - Index of Articles
Voter registration material runs out in Bulawayo
Tichaona
Sibanda, SW Radio Africa
July 04, 2013
View this article
on the SW Radio Africa website here
The continuing
saga of problems plaguing the voter registration exercise descended
into a farce when materials ran out in Bulawayo on Thursday.
Long queues
had been forming outside the registration centers as potential voters
made a final dash to add their names to roll, with just five days
left before the month long exercise comes to an end.
But the forms
that people use to fill in their details ran out in the country’s
second largest city.
Officials from
the Registrar-General’s office next to the Drill Hall were
left with no alternative but to turn away hundreds of fuming residents
who had queued since morning.
Lionel Saungweme,
our correspondent told us that many residents are complaining that
voter registrars have been notoriously slow. This has led to some
irate members of the public walking out of the exercise following
long delays standing in queues.
Saungweme said
residents have been telling him that there should be no rush into
election without fair adequate registration of people, saying consequences
of such actions might be catastrophic.
On Wednesday
we reported that thousands of potential voters countrywide are still
facing bottlenecks to get their names on the voters roll.
This has led
to calls for the government to overhaul the system of voter registration,
by introducing biometric voter registration
for the 2018 elections. They said the technology will infuse
the electoral system with transparency and accountability as well
as increasing public confidence in the democratic process.
The continuing
saga of problems plaguing the voter registration exercise descended
into a farce when materials ran out in Bulawayo on Thursday.
SW Radio
Africa is Zimbabwe's Independent Voice and broadcasts on Short Wave
4880 KHz in the 60m band.
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