Malawi voter registration budget balloons
Pollster Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has said its voter registration budget has ballooned from an initial K600m to K1.6bn.
MEC chief executive officer Sam Alufandika said the doubling of the voter registration budget is as a result of a decision to have the National Registration Bureau (NRB) registration staff in all the 5002 voter registration centres instead of the initial 1000 special centres MEC had planned to create.
“After consultations, after an audience with His Excellency the State President, after evaluation, we agreed to have the NRB registration staff to work side by side with our staff,” he said.
He said MEC was responsible for the NRB costs because it had hired the NRB.
MEC has a shortfall of K7.5bn after government gave the pollster K33bn instead of K42bn.
Government has set aside K10bn for a tree planting exercise by the youth, money, analysts say, should be channelled to meet the poll budget deficit.
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My plea with MEC is to tread carefully this time. I hope the changes being made from 1000 to 5002 having NRB in centres is not only done with meeting with the president. All stakeholders need to have an input.
All the way to final stage……eyes on you,processes, innovations and changes.
Kuba paja bomaa ili lambava. Now how do you register those that are not yet 18 at NRB? They will need to be part of the history of removing mbava and okalamba.
A Khamula, a tree planting exercise by the youth has been allocated 5.+ billion and not 10 billion. Do research first before you bring your wrong figures to the public.
We do not have reporters in Malawi, we have political agitators. They have no interest in news.