UPND Claims Voter Registration Will Disenfranchise Many

UPND Secretary General Stephen Katuka has criticised the ongoing voter registration exercise, saying the process will disenfranchise many Zambians.

In particular Mr Katuka pointed to malfunctioning machines, a lack of ECZ staff and widespread load shedding as just some of the issues dogging the registration process.

He said the ECZ’s insistence that it could capture 9 million voters ahead of the 2021 election was obviously wrong.

“I don’t see how the ECZ expects to capture the 9 million voters because it is taking 30 minutes to capture one member. In certain instances, they have no genset to provide power . There is this load shedding of 12 hours and they have no capacity to use the genset because either there is no fuel or the machine has malfunctioned or that the computer is not working,” Katuka said. 

The UPND secretary general charged the ECZ to ‘pull up their socks’ in order to register the necessary number of voters ahead of the 12th December deadline. 

He also encouraged UPND members who had not received National Registration Cards during the recent issuing exercise to travel to district National Registration Centres in order to register as voters. 

The issuance of NRCs last month has been similarly criticised for failing to meet registration targets and disenfranchising voters.