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ZimRights condemns hijacking of census
Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights)
August 07, 2012

The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association condemns the purported attempts by some politicians to hijack the impending population counting process. The independent media this week is awash with reports that ZANU PF has taken the process as a mobilizing opportunity where they would reward loyal affiliates and potential supporters with decision making positions of the enumeration process. Soldiers and the police have been mentioned as specific groups that were intended to benefit from the favoritism before the plot was halted by the finance ministry yesterday. Reports are that the registration of enumerators was temporarily suspended yesterday to give way for a proper vetting process that will see deserving people getting the nod.

This is not the first time for uniformed forces to be embroiled in such scams. There are long standing claims that they were offered such favours in exchange for secret back-ups to alleged violent campaigning strategies of ZANU PF in previous electoral processes. Such practices amount to gross abuse of public offices hence ZimRights demands that resources be shared equally and equitably. Given such an aforementioned unprofessional reputation and conduct of the uniformed forces, chances are high that their involvement may result in distortion of the results of the counting process. There will always be suspicion if the kind of census data is collected by soldiers yet the country needs appropriate information for governmental policies to be made from an informed position. The organization also takes this opportunity to commend responsible authorities for swiftly attending to the matter before things went out of hand. It is our hope that the vetting process will be very transparent to the extent that even if a uniformed force is selected, that will be on merit not anything outside the criteria used on everyone. ZimRights would also like to encourage Zimbabweans to cooperate during the process bearing in mind that the accuracy of the outcome will have a positive effect to the realization of some of their rights such as socio-economic rights.

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