K100mn Needed For Voter Registration

The Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) needs K100 million for a voter registration exercise scheduled to start in May.

According to the ECZ CEO Patrick Nshindano the exercise will target 9 million potential voters. The total budget for the exercise is over K800 million.

Nshindano confirmed that the ECZ is in discussions with the department for National Registration to ensure plans are aligned.

Last month the Christian Churches Monitoring Group (CCMG) called on Government to provide clarity regarding its plans for issuing new National Registration Cards (NRCs) ahead of the 2021 elections.

CCMG requested details regarding any NRC programmes in order to ensure that citizens ae given adequate opportunity to register to vote and avoid disenfranchisement. Without a valid NRC citizens will be unable to secure a Voters card.

In 2015 national mobile NRC issuance took place for several months before the mobile voter registration exercise. Speaking on the lack of clarity concerning NRC issuance CCMG Steering Committee Spokesperson Fr Chikoya stated, “CCMG is very concerned about the lack of any publicly available information related to the Ministry of Home Affairs’ schedule for the nationwide mobile NRC issuance exercise. We are now just more than two months away from when ECZ says it will begin mobile voter registration.”

Fr Chikoya further noted that failure to provide this information could give rise to the perception that the process is unfair and damage public confidence in future elections.

The ECZ has previously proposed to produce a new Voters Register targeting nine million voters ahead of the 2021 General Election. However, due to limited time and resources an update to the existing register is now being considered.