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LAMGABHI – The EBC has been cautioned to fix boundaries issues as they tend to result into conflicts that lead to criminal incidents.

This was raised by one Sipho Mabuza, a constituency member of LaMgabhi, who was speaking during the civic and voter education exercise held at Lamgabhi Royal Kraal yesterday. The exercise was conducted by the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) officials ahead of the national elections set for this year.

Mabuza alluded to that, to date, the boundaries issue was of great concern to residents as they were still not certain as to where their boundary ended. He noted that some Luyengo residents came to LaMgabhi to claim the boundaries and taught about them. He quoted an incident where lives were lost due to that there was no control of boundaries. Mabuza said there were officials who were paid to address such issues, but were sleeping on the job.

It is worth noting that former MP Ntuthuko Dlamini is incarcerated resulting from a conflict of land boundaries, where three men were shot dead in the area. Mabuza also added that there was a man who was arrested for selling land through kukhonta illegally at LaMgabhi, attributing this to the confusion in boundaries. He said there was a conflict that emanated thereafter. The constituent warned the EBC team to rectify the issue before it got out of hand and it was too late.

On another note, Mandlenkhosi Dlamini expressed dissatisfaction on the government machines used to capture residents during registration for elections. He decried the quality of the pictures, mentioning that the results were in such a way that those captured could not be identified easily. He said they ended up voting for people they were not familiar with.

Responding to the submission on boundaries, EBC Education Facilitator Vusumuzi Mdluli said the commission was only involved in constituency boundaries, and not traditional ones. Mdluli advised that the constituents should forward the matter to the regional administrators. On the quality of pictures, he said the issue was on the staff who were not properly capacitated and trained on handling of the equipment. The education facilitator said they had high quality equipment which was in order. He said they had to properly train their staff on how to use the equipment.