Parties urge youths to register as voters

of the on-going mobile voter registration exercise to register as voters and exercise their democratic right to vote during the forthcoming harmonised elections scheduled for the first half of the year.

Zanu-PF spokesperson Cde Rugare Gumbo yesterday said the party had embarked on a massive exercise to encourage the youths to register as voters.

“We rolled out a programme today (yesterday) where we will be targeting students and the youths to register as voters. The programme will continue for the next two weeks and it will cover all parts of the country,” he said.

He said the party wanted the youths to take advantage of the on-going national mobile voter registration to register as voters.

Zanu-PF Member of Parliament for Uzumba constituency Cde Simbaneuta Mudarikwa said the party had already started educating the youths on the importance of voting.

“We are targeting the youths even those still in schools and we are urging headmasters of the schools in the district to encourage students who have turned 18 to register as voters,” he said.

In Matabeleland South, Zanu-PF provincial chairman Cde Andrew Langa said they deployed enough manpower across all the seven districts to encourage the people to vote.

“We have deployed across the province with the view of informing and mobilising our people on the importance of registering as voters so that they exercise their constitutional right and vote during the forthcoming elections.

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“This also applies to people from different political parties; they should also partake in the voter registration programme.

“The idea is to increase the number of our party supporters on the voters’ roll so that we can win the elections with a wider margin,” he said.

The MDC deputy national spokesperson, Mr Kurauone Chihwayi, said their party was running a national exercise of training and mobilising the youths to register as voters.

Mr Chihwayi also said the exercise was also meant to make sure that the youths had the necessary documents in place to register.

“We have deployed adequate teams in all districts and provinces to target the youths specifically and train them to be ready for the coming elections.

“The problem we are facing is that mobile registration is not visible, I myself don’t even know where the nearest mobile registration is, so we have communicated with the relevant authorities to make sure that they fix this because we do not want this to deprive the young voters,” he said.

MDC-T spokesperson Mr Douglas Mwonzora said MDC-T had been encouraging the youths to register mainly through inter party soccer tournaments where they were continuously educating them on the importance of voting.

“We are very much involved in encouraging young people to vote because we have noticed in the past elections they usually did not vote,” he said.