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Voters registration process slow in Khomas

2019-07-25  Albertina Nakale

Voters registration process slow in Khomas

WINDHOEK- With only a few days left before the supplementary voters’ registration ends, the turnout has been recorded as slow. 

In terms of section 38 (1) of the Electoral Act, the supplementary registration of voters will be conducted over 18 days, it started on July 8 and will end on Saturday (July 27), as duly proclaimed by President Hage Geingob.

New Era visited few voters register points around Windhoek and most of them were empty.
In an interview with New Era, Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) Khomas regional coordinator Hendrik van Wyk confirmed that the voters registration process has been slow since it started.
He revealed the Khomas Region has thus far registered between 25 000 to 30 000.

“This is low. We normally register more than 50 000 to 70 000 for the first two weeks in Khomas. The low turnout could be attributed to the cold weather, I don’t know. But we are expecting that these last few days, the turnout will definitely grow,” he said.

 “The process in Khomas is going slowly. It started very slow. There were limited voters from day one and then the process started picking up the first weekend because we are also registering people until Saturday night. This is the trend in Khomas where the last few days is when we expect a high turnout,” he revealed. 

According to him, many people are still in possession of their 2014 voter cards and have also not changed their constituencies, hence there is no need for them to register this time around.
Khomas Region has 10 constituencies, with 104 registration points.
Each point has a supervisor with his or her team members.

The regional coordinator indicated that their busy days are from Monday to Friday when people knock off at 17h00.

He added that Moses Garoeb Constituency being the biggest in Khomas, last week Saturday managed to register about 1 000 people in one day.

On the language barriers, he said translation is not a challenge because ECN team members comprise of officials who are conversant in local languages.

Further, Van Wyk said although the numbers are low, there have been no major incidences of violence from eligible voters.

He says the prevailing peace is due to the presence of the law enforcement officials at each of ECN voter register points.

However, he anticipates some disruptions on Friday until Saturday when the process ends.
“We are expecting some difficulties this weekend because it’s the last time people are going to register. But I believe our law enforcement officials will handle that,” he said.

Additionally, he said ECN managed to provide sufficient tents and vehicles.
He confirmed Khomas Region ECN teams have made use of a lot of private vehicles because of the shortage of government cars.

Van Wyk urged all those eligible voters to go to register points to be able to exercise their democratic rights of voting and choose their leaders to run the affairs of the country.
Namibia will be going to the polls on November 27 for the Presidential and National Assembly elections. 
 


2019-07-25  Albertina Nakale

Tags: Khomas
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