By LYNET IGADWAH
Nearly 100,000 extra people will be hired to preside
over next year’s General Election following plans to create an extra
12,000 polling stations to ease congestion that could lead to voter
apathy.
Ezra Chiloba, the chief executive of the Independent
Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC), informed Parliament last week of
the plan to increase the polling stations to 44,000 from current
gazetted 32, 000.
This will create demand for more polling clerks,
presiding officers and their deputies in what will cost the electoral
agency billions of shillings in pay.
“The increase of polling stations to 44,000 is
necessary if we are going to register an additional 8 million voters,”
Mr Chiloba told Parliament’s Justice and Legal Affairs Committee last
Thursday.
Each polling station will be manned by a presiding officer, a deputy preceding officer and the six clerks.
This means IEBC will require 352, 000 workers on
the voting day, up from 256,000 that were hired during the 2013 General
Elections.
The commission reckons it will require Sh4.4
billion to pay the polling staff on top of Sh3.29 billion it will
require for the fresh voter listing that will happen for 30 days between
February and March and will involve 30, 000 clerks.
It will also require another half a billion to hire
15, 000 clerks for 30 days to inspect the voter register ahead of the
August 2017 general elections.
The cost of the 2017 election is set to hit Sh40.5
billion. Mr Chiloba said additional polling stations mean additional
electronic voter identification kits (Evids) and additional results
transmission gadgets.
The agency wants Sh3.5 billion to buy Evids and
result transmissions kits that broke down in the 2013 poll, leading to
suspicion of rigging
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