WINDHOEK – Following calls to bar civil servants from taking up temporary jobs during the 2019 supplementary registration of voters, the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) says no single government official was recruited for this exercise.
ECN chairperson Advocate Notemba Tjipueja said exception has however been granted to foreign mission staff who are eligible by the Electoral Law to assist in providing services for registration and polling at all Namibian foreign missions.
Early this year, there was a public outcry over civil servants possibly being recruited, as they would have to take leave to work for an extra allowance during the elections. The call was rather to allow young unemployed people to take up ECN temporary jobs.
Such outcry also saw the defence ministry issuing a directive that soldiers wishing to apply for such positions should rather give a chance to poor Namibians.
Following the adoption of the 2019 election calendar by the ECN, temporary jobs for elections officials were advertised earlier this year, from January 15 to February 15.
Recruitment commenced immediately after the advertisement period was concluded.
Tjipueja confirmed ECN has successfully recruited a total number of 4 488 registration officials from whom 671 teams were composed to serve 4 069 registration points spread over 14 regions and 121 constituencies countrywide.
She said the persons selected from this recruitment drive are a combination of unemployed youth with appropriate qualifications and other people with electoral expertise experience. In terms of section 65 (2)
(a), the Electoral Act provides for the training of election officials, which is a recognition of the fact that free, fair and credible elections are a direct result of well-trained registration and election officials.
In this regard, she noted the training was conducted at three distinct functional levels –being level one of regional managers; level two for supervisors and level three of regional logistics and registration officers.
She reported that 14 regional coordinators and 28 assistant coordinators were successfully trained from June 17-19, and they have already assumed duties in their respective regions.
Equally, 68 diplomatic mission officials (two per mission) were appointed to conduct the supplementary voter registration at all 34 Namibian diplomatic missions.
She said they underwent training locally from June 17-24 on both registration and polling processes in order to economise on the cost of flying them to and from their respective diplomatic missions. “They all returned to their duty stations on 26thh June. The ECN wishes to take this opportunity to express its gratitude to the Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation for facilitating this effort, but also to the individual staff members involved for demonstrating dedication to their motherland,” she noted.
Additionally, 14 regional IT technicians were trained from June 18-20 and have already been deployed to their respective regions. A total number of 121 supervisors of registration were trained from June 20-24 and have already assumed their duties at their respective constituencies.
Another 54 regional logistic officers were trained from June 18-19 and have also been deployed to their respective regions, on June 20.
Tjipueja said the training of 3 345 registration officers is still ongoing at designated clusters in all 14 regions from June 28 until today (July 5), when they will be ready for deployment to their various duty stations on Saturday (July 6).