IEC hosts key stakeholders meeting
Ryder Gabathuse | Friday October 12, 2018 13:52
The Francistown-based IEC principal elections officer, Nyanga Nyanga said yesterday that the meeting is in accordance with his plan for the voter registration exercise to give his office findings of the progress made so far. The meeting will be held at the civic centre hall.
Key stakeholders targeted for this meeting include all political parties’ regional chairpersons and branch chairpersons, prospective candidates for all political parties, prospective independent candidates or mekoko, chairperson ministers fraternal and the media.
“The voter registration progress meeting is long planned before the exercise even commenced to address the challenges that all stakeholders are aware of,” Nyanga said.
The analysis of the three Francistown constituencies reflect that the first week of the exercise saw satisfactory registration numbers and the numbers have unfortunately been steadily declining.
IEC records show that the first week in that order, 4,388 people registered followed by 2,882, 1,732, 1,319 and 1,298 people registering respectively in second to fifth weeks. In total up to the fifth week, 11,619 people have registered.
Nyanga observed that when things started, people ran to register and at the finishing point he is optimistic that more people will register for the elections.
He was reluctant to reveal the targeted registration number but only indicated that the IEC was targeting a national figure of about 1.5 million people to register for the 2019 general elections.
Nyanga’s office is yet to collate registered figures in terms of gender dynamics and the youth that have registered so far. But, he indicated that their strategies focused on the females and the youth.
In an endeavour to attract more people to the registration stations, the IEC in collaboration with the District Commissioner’s office has been taking the services of their office to the people. They have already gone to the concentrated locations of Monarch, Gerald Estates amongst others encouraging people to register in large numbers.
They have also been targeting the faith-based sectors as they have many people to ensure that they don’t miss out on the registration process.
The IEC has lately been using the traditional method to deliver its messages through the public address systems blurring out pertinent information for the benefit of the public.
“When politicians address kgotla meetings, we avail ourselves so that we can continue taking the pertinent messages of the elections to the people,” Nyanga said indicating that his office shared the heavy task with its key stakeholders.