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Addressing the media in Harare yesterday, Registrar-General Mr Tobaiwa Mudiwa said this would result in increased budget for mobile voter registration since it would be done in less than three months.
He said his office would not just remove people from the voters’ roll willy-nilly without seeing their death certificates from their relatives.
“We are used to conducting mobile voter registration in three months but we are not looking at three months anymore because of the time factor,” said Mr Mudede.
“As soon as we get the money that we have requested for the exercise we can work extra hours to make sure we complete the registration.
“If the Ministry of Finance releases the money we will immediately go to the public service and request them to recruit more members for us to do the exercise. We have very short time to do the job so we may require some reasonable amount to carry out our mandate.”
Failure by the Treasury to release money for the exercise, Mr Mudede said, was crippling his organisation’s mandate ahead of the harmonised elections set for some time this year.
He said his office had waited for a long time for Treasury to release money.
Mr Mudede said mobile voter registration was a necessity as it would facilitate eligible voters to register so that they could participate in the forthcoming elections.
He dismissed claims by Finance Minister and MDC-T secretary general Mr Tendai Biti that two thirds of registered voters on the voters’ roll were deceased
“The statement is clearly and vividly untrue. If indeed he uttered such words then this is sufficient evidence that the Honourable Minister who has made his malicious statement does not know the electoral system in this country. The said statement is not supported by any mathematics of reality.
“The voters’ statistics of the June 28 harmonised election figure was 5 842 951. Two thirds of that population translates to 3 895 301 (claimed deaths). Meaning to say that after the 2008 harmonised elections there were 1 947 650 people on the voters’ roll,” said Mr Mudede.
He also said his office was conducting voter registration regardless of political affiliation adding that security forces were allowed to register to vote.
This, he said, in response to MDC-T claims that security forces were being forced to register to drum up support for Zanu-PF and President Mugabe.
Online Reporter