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to begin next week after Government secured funds for the exercise, deputy chairperson of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, Mrs Joice Kazembe, said yesterday.
In an interview on the sidelines of a workshop on voter education with faith-based organisations, Mrs Kazembe said teams would be dispatched to all the wards.
“We have got the funding and we will be starting next week. We will have teams in all the 1 958 wards in the country, but more details would be made public by the chairperson (Justice Rita Makarau).”
The exercise would be undertaken by ZEC and the Registrar of Voters department after a similar exercise was undertaken three weeks ago.
About 200 000 Zimbabweans registered as first-time voters during the blitz though there were indications that more people might have failed to register.
Registrar-General of Voters Mr Tobaiwa Mudede said lack of resources constrained his office from executing its mandate as it had envisaged when the exercise was launched.
Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa had earlier this week taken a swipe at Minister Biti for underfunding the previous process as part of efforts to delay holding of harmonised elections.
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Only US$4 million was released for the first exercise by Treasury despite the fact that US$8 million had been secured for the purpose.
Meanwhile, in her address to the leaders of faith-based organisations, Mrs Kazembe said it was their responsibility to ensure that the country conducts a peaceful and credible election.
“I cannot over-emphasise the point that everyone in a position of authority should be driving the same train, large enough to contain all of us, the train carrying the message peace, peace that must ensue, before, during and after the much-anticipated harmonised elections later this year,” she said.
Commissioner Dr Petty Makoni and co-ordinator of yesterday’s workshop said it was meant to address concerns raised by faith-based organisations’ leaders on various aspects to do with voter education.
“This meeting is a follow-up to the one we had earlier this month. There are various issues associated with voter education and this was meant to fill the gaps over those issues which they did not understand,” she said.
Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe president Archbishop Johannes Ndanga said the workshop had enlightened them.
“The workshop was about teaching what we need to know about voter education and how we should encourage our members and society at large to register as voters,” he said.
Archbishop Ndanga said while ZEC had urged them to be impartial as church leaders, it was difficult for them to remain neutral given the existence of illegal sanctions which he said favoured the MDC-T.
“Zidera is explicit in its support for opposition groups and parties that include the MDC-T in their regime change agenda and that alone makes the playing field uneven.
“We will therefore speak out against the sanctions. It is our role as church leaders to seek justice and we cannot therefore be expected to be neutral when only a few Zimbabweans are benefiting from the sanctions,” he said.
ZEC has invited interested civic organisations interested in carrying out voter education to apply to the electoral body by tomorrow at the latest.
ZEC issued the invitations last week and Mrs Kazembe said the law provided for involvement of CSOs in voter education.
She said the approved organisations would, however, carry out the voter education based on the handbook produced by ZEC while any other information outside that provided would need to be approved.
She said the use of uniform information was meant to prevent distribution of partisan material adding the electoral body would monitor the activities of approved CSOs.
The groups should send their applications to ZEC before the end of day tomorrow with information that include, registration certificates, details of contact persons, physical and postal address, organisation profile, membership, constitution and mandate among others.
Online Reporter