The country’s electoral body, the Electoral Commission of Namibia, received N$282 million in the current financial year, translating into N$62 million, more than the N$220 million allocated to the institution during the previous financial year.
Motivating the commission’s budget in parliament this week, Speaker of the National Assembly Peter Katjavivi said the electoral body has a daunting task of preparing for this year’s local and regional authority elections against the backdrop of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Katjavivi said from the N$282 million, a total of N$46 million has been allocated for personnel expenditure while N$236 million is allocated for non-personnel expenditure.
In executing its mandate, Katjavivi said the ECN has two crucial programmes: administration of elections and the voter and civic education.
“Through this programme, ECN is expected to recruit, train and deploy election officials to conduct registration of voters at various levels to perform duty during all voter registration-related activities,” he said. According to him, this implies that the ECN will recruit and train approximately 5 00 registration officials for deployment in all 121 constituencies and 57 local authorities to register all eligible voters comprising a total of around 800 registration teams.
“The ECN is required to conduct polling for the regional councils and local authority council elections countrywide during the period under review,” Katjavivi said.
During this process, Katjavivi said the ECN, through this programme, is similarly expected to recruit, train and deploy around 13 000 election officials. He said the re-introduction of a manual ballot paper voting system will require the ECN to print around 1.4 million and 446 100 ballot papers for 121 constituencies and 57 local authorities, respectively, leading to an increase in expenditure on the part of the commission.
Katjavivi said during this financial year, the ECN must also make contingency provisions for by-elections, which could occur at any time and thus N$161 million has been allocated for the administration of elections, of which an amount of N$9 million is for personnel expenditure, while N$152 million will cater for non-personnel expenditures, which is for the procurement of goods and other services, including all elections-related expenditure.
Furthermore, Katjavivi said an amount of N$53 million has been allocated for voter education.
From the N$53 million, N$17 million is for personnel expenditures, while N$36 million will cater for non-personnel expenditures, which is for the procurement of goods and other services.
He said the programme policy co-ordination and supervision and support services received an amount of N$69 million, of which N$20 million is for personnel expenditures, while N$49 million will cater for non-personnel expenditures, which is for the procurement of goods and other services.
Kuzeeko Tjitemisa
2020-06-11 10:02:43 | 1 months ago
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