By Collings Kalivute, MEC Stringer
Ntcheu District Elections Supervisory Team (DEST) has expressed satisfaction with the way voter registration exercise has started in the district despite recoding a number of challenges.
Spokesperson for the team who is also Director of Administration (DOA), Hastings Mlambuzi said the team is satisfied with the way the registration has started in the district though recording a number of challenges that need urgent action.
He said lack of enough publicity in remote areas is one of the major challenges that has affected the district as many people are not aware of the exercise hence resulting to low turnout of people in many registration centers.
“We have noted that many people are not aware of the exercise due to lack of enough publicity especially in remote areas. As of now the turnout is not much convincing and we are asking for all stakeholders to intervene as soon as possible to sensitize people on the exercise,” he said.
However, it has also transpired that the absence of National Registration Bureau (NRB) Staff at voter registration centers restricts people without national identity cards from registering unlike last year’s May Tripartite Elections (TPE) where they were being registered first by the NRB staff on the same center.
According to Mlambuzi the development is a setback to people in the district as they are travelling long distances from their respective registration centers to the District council office or post offices just to register for national I’Ds before registering to vote.
Mlambuzi has pleaded with NRB to act quickly to the situation in the district by deploying their staffs in different registration centers to ease the pressure that people are facing.
“As the team here in Ntcheu we are pleading with the NRB to atleast deploy their staffs in different centers atleast one per constituency to help deal with the challenges that we are currently facing,” said Mlambuzi.
One of the registration staff who opted for anonymity said the turnout will soon improve as the days are passing by saying it has been a tendency that some people prefer to register in the last days of the registration.
