United Party for National Development (UPND) Secretary General, Stephen Katuka has described the on-going voter registration exercise as a mess that would defranchise alot of people.
Mr Katuka also notes that the issuance of voters cards that commenced on Monday has been marred with a lot of prohibitive factors ranging from malfunctioning machines, limited number of ECZ officials deployed to issue the voters cards as well as the rampant load shedding that has gripped the country.
He stated that it was a fallacy for the ECZ to keep insisting that it was on course towards capturing the targeted 9 million voters in the 2021 voters register when it was embroiled in numerous challenges.
“I don’t see how the ECZ expects to capture the 9 million voters because it is taking 30 minutes to capture one member. In certain instances, they have no genset to provide power . There is this load shedding of 12 hours and they have no capacity to use the genset because either there is no fuel or the machine has malfunctioned or that the computer is not working,” said Katuka.
Mr Katuka challenged the ECZ to up their game and stop making endless excuses over the issuance of voter’s cards, adding that the current voters card’s quality was not of a desired standard.
“With that in mind, I appeal to the ECZ to pull up their socks and see to it that they do this exercise professionally and capture the necessary numbers that they are looking for. Also the quality of this document is very poor if compared to the one that we had during the previous election and am afraid this card can’t last for too long in the wallet,” he said.
He has since appealed to UPND members who were left out in the just-ended National Registration Card registration exercise to visit district National Registration Centres spread across the country to acquire NRCs, saying that was the only way they’d be able to register as voters.
The message must be that we all go and queue to get registered. Let’s not relax, whatever the challenges. ECZ doesn’t care how many man-hours we lose on those queues. Let’s take advantage of the weekend to go enmass to register to vote
Ba SG you should worry more about TAYALI now. The public lawyer will mess up HH ‘s aspirations to become President in 2021.
The first day I attempted I went to a center around 14:00 hrs. There were about 20 people in front of me and it was taking 15 to 20 minutes for someone to emerge out with a voters card. I did my math and concluded I was not going to make it. I went back the following day at 07:30 and I was number 14 on the queue. This day was faster taking about 10 minutes to register someone. Despite allowing several elderly people and those who claimed to be six I was out by 09:30 with a card. It is true ECZ need to increase it staffing at every center. On the issue of power ECZ seemed equipped. Their equipment held without power for hours there was a genset on standby.
Lelo bamoneka kwati in Dan Pule
Your ugly face is also in a mess. What have you done about it?
Iwe chiKaizar….leave our SG alone! Kwati iwe ulimusuma atase!
WOULD or WILL.
DEFRANCHISE or DISENFRANCHISE.
English is a problem in Zambia today. We should either scrap it and speak our native tongues or speak it well.
Kaizar.. are you sure the man is ugly????? No man/woman made by God is ugly. We are all made in the image of GOD including ba Mudala.
Iwe stop sugar coating ugliness. Mubi uyu