MEC warns registration staff on alcohol abuse

Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has asked District Education Managers to desist from deploying habitual drinkers as registration staff at centres saying the practice is compromising the quality of work and costly.

MEC Commissioner Reverend Mezuwa Banda said in many cases the electoral body has noted that it had encountered problems with teachers deployed to registration centres, who exhibited signs of terrible hangovers.

Commissioner Reverend Mezuwa Banda said this during a District Elections Supervisory Team (DEST) meeting in Mzuzu on Monday.

Voter registration in Mzuzu will commence from December 5 to 18, 2013.

Commissioner Mezuwa Banda

“Registration is a very important exercise and we do not want people that have been drinking the whole night to man our centres. Such people are prone to making mistakes,” he said.

According to MEC copious mistakes that have dodged the exercise so far and have proved to be costly include the misspelling of names, the capturing of wrong signatures, and voting centres.

“Our plea is that DEMs should give us other staff. We hope the habitual drinkers are not the only people that able to do this type of work. We need sober minded people so that the exercise proceeds with minimal glitches,” Commissioner Banda said.

The voter registration exercise for the 2014 tripartite polls started on July 22, 2013.

For the 2014 Tripartite Elections, the Commission decided that everyone should register; whether they registered before or not.

And anyone who was born before 20th May, 1996 will have to register because they will have attained the age of 18 on the polling day.

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