NEC report on BVR trial out this week

A registration clerk takes a voter’s fingerprints during the trial biometric voter registration in Kawe Constituency, Dar es Salaam. PHOTO | FILE 

By Alex Bitekeye,The Citizen Reporter

In Summary

• The Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (Policy Coordination and National Assembly), Mr William Lukuvi, had assured the public that eligible voters who were not registered will be given the opportunity to do so when the NEC opens the exercise for the whole country.

Dar es Salaam. The National Electoral Commission (NEC) has completed the evaluation of the pilot project to register voters electronically and will make its findings public this week.

Trials of biometric voter registration (BVR) were conducted in three constituencies, namely Kawe (Dar es Salaam), Kilombero (Morogoro) and Mlele (Katavi).

NEC Director of Elections Julius Malaba told The Citizen that the electoral body had evaluated the project and its report would be released any time from tomorrow.

He said some challenges, weaknesses and strength with regard to registering voters by using BVR were evident, but refused to provide details, saying everything would be revealed during a press conference this week.

According to Mr Malaba, weaknesses experienced during the pilot project will be rectified so as to improve the registration process when it commences at the end of January across the country. The pilot process to register voters by using BVR was hit by hiccups which include malfunction of the few available machines in the pilot areas and the apparently poorly trained clerks.

Calls for NEC to extend the seven day deadline which was set to register voters, were made by people who failed to register during the exercise in Kawe.

Many fear that they will be locked out when the exercise starts countrywide in January due to limited time set aside for the exercise. NEC expects to register 23 million voters in 30 days when the exercise goes countrywide.