The Electoral Commission of Namibia is in need of 1 500 vehicles to successfully conduct the 2024 general registration of voters as well as Presidential and National Assembly Elections, a situation that has left the commission with no option but to approach private vehicle owners to fill the existing gap.
In compliance with Section 63(1) of the Electoral Act, Act No.5 of 2014, Namibia is required to conduct the next Presidential and National Assembly elections towards the end of November 2024.
In terms of Section 25 (1) of the Electoral Act, the commission is obliged to also conduct a general registration of voters not later than 10 years after the last general registration.
The last general registration of voters took place from 15 January to 2 March 2014 – and the next general registration of voters is, therefore, scheduled to take place during a similar period from January to March 2024.
Motivating the 2023/24 budgetary allocation of the ECN on Friday, speaker of the National Assembly Peter Katjavivi said the commission will require about 1 500 vehicles during the scheduled general registration of voters to be used at various levels of the registration process.
The speaker requested the National Assembly to approve N$421.9 million for ECN’s operations during the 2023/2024 financial year.
“Securing of vehicles is very crucial towards conducting any electoral process and the general registration of voters is thus no exception. As a result, the commission will have no choice but to hire a pool of vehicles from various government garages as well as from the members of the public to compensate for any possible shortfall,” Katjavivi noted.
In addition, the commission is required to recruit, train and deploy general registration of voter officials estimated to be 7 850, including youth ambassadors, supervisors, team leaders, registration officers, IT technicians and administrative support staff.
In this regard, training is planned to take place in established clusters across the country for a maximum of six days for all registration officials who will be recruited.
The registration officials will be deployed for a maximum period of 90 days, of which around 42 days will be earmarked for the actual conduct of the general registration of voters.
During the 2023/2024 financial year, Katjavivi highlighted the commission will implement its permanent structure for the regions in compliance with Section 4(2)(n), read with Section 19 of the Electoral Act. He stressed the filling of the positions of the 14 regional electoral officers is critical in preparation for the conduct of the 2024 general registration of voters and subsequent Presidential and National Assembly elections and beyond as part of strengthening electoral administration and democracy.
Currently, the 14 regional offices countrywide are responsible only for the implementation of civic and voter education programmes.
According to him, additional funding is needed to sustain the operations of ECN regional offices during the 2022/23-2024/25 financial years.
“In this connection, the ECN will engage Treasury in the near future in order to discuss its budgetary requirements, specifically for capital projects, for the next MTEF [medium-term expenditure framework] period,” he said.
– anakale@nepc.com.na