BVR gets equipment boost

Herald Reporter
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has procured equipment to upgrade its data centre with the help of the UNDP, as the second phase of the biometric voter registration gathers momentum. The equipment consists of the production server for storing, processing and production of the voters roll and a back up server. In a statement yesterday, ZEC said the installation of the equipment is expected to be complete by mid this month. The electoral body said access to the servers would be restricted to authorised ZEC employees.

“Procurement of the automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) is at an advanced stage,” read part of the statement. The AFIS system will be used to remove multiple registrations when it is run through the Biometric Voter Registration data at the end of the voter registration blitz.” ZEC said two companies qualified to demonstrate their systems and this was done on October 31, 2017 as part of the tender process.

“These demonstrations were witnessed by stakeholders namely, political parties, civil society organisations and faith-based organisations,” it said.
“The technical evaluation report was forwarded to the State Procurement Board for finalisation of the procurement process.” Over 1,2 million people were registered during the first phase of the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) exercise, which ended on October 26.

“The second phase of the programme is underway. The commission is confident of reaching the targeted seven million registrants.