Registration for elections opens next week - Dr Njabu
NHLANGANO – Registrations for the national elections will begin next Wednesday.
This was revealed by the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) Commissioner, Dr Njabu Dlamini. She stated that the registration would last for five weeks, from the starting date.
Responding to questions on progress in the hiring of polling officers who would be working during the elections, Dr Dlamini stated that they were done with the Information and Technology (IT) Department, who would be operating the voting machines as from next week.
Dlamini explained that they had received many applications, which was why it took time to go through them
Process
“We are currently at the vetting process as we are supposed to vet all of those we will hire, to see if they qualify for the jobs,” she said.
The commissioner mentioned that even the clerks and senior citizen were to be vetted.
She stated that they were going to train the officers further after the hiring process.
Meanwhile, two senior citizens
have been selected per chiefdom to be competent witnesses during the upcoming national elections.
They were trained in different parts of the country. One of the training sessions was held at Evelyn Baring, in the Shiselweni Region. At least 200 senior citizens will be working in the Shiselweni Region.
The criteria for one to be considered competent for the work is to know the community members. It was gathered that the selection criteria entailed one of each gender, though other chiefdoms chose people of the same gender.
According to the EBC, the selected senior citizens will be confirming knowledge of people who will show up without national identity cards or those who had different chief codes.
“It has been said that people were often collected from textile firms and brought to register; the commission and the country is counting on you to ensure that such does not happen,” said Dr Dlamini.
The senior citizens were strongly warned against accepting bribes from people who wanted them to allow unknown people to register.
Supposed
It was said that the senior citizens were supposed to question anything they suspected to be wrong, including underage people, gifts that were dished out by persons and a large number of people with different codes that were registering.
They were told to declare if they, their children or close relatives, were interested in standing for elections.
This was said to be done in the interest of transparency and fairness. On a different note, the senior citizens were warned against offering favours, including making their relatives jump queues. They were