Sunday 22 February 2015

CHADEMA:SUPPLIERS DOUBTS BVR Kits

...
INNOCENT-THE BLOGGER-BOY

Chadema Deputy Secretary General John Mnyika.
The largest opposition party in the country-Chadema has said it has reliable information that states that the company awarded the tender to supply Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits has so far not rectified the faults noted in the gadgets.
 
Chadema’s claims have come a day after the National Electoral Commission (NEC) admitted that it is possible it might fail to complete registering voters biometrically before the referendum date.
 
Speaking to reporters yesterday in Dar es Salaam, Chadema Deputy Secretary General John Mnyika (pictured) said the party has managed to intercept communication between the national electoral body and IPSITI, the supplier company, in which the latter informs NEC officials that it is yet to rectify the faults noted in the kits during the trials end of last year. 
 
That information suggests that NEC will fail to accomplish the task given the time left to the date of the referendum, he said.
 
Communication between NEC and IPSITI shows that despite that earlier the BVR kits imported for trials worked with several challenges and NEC promised to sort them out, until now nothing has been solved.
 
 Mnyika said that they have managed to access reliable communication indicating   delay in modifying BVR kits since January as until now the kits have not been modified.
 
“Due to that delay we are hesitating to believe that NEC will accomplish the task according to the time allocated as the time left is too short,” he said.
 
 NEC will start registering eligible voters in Njombe Region tomorrow and the exercise take place up to March 25. “The electoral body will spend more than a month in one region while there are more than 25 regions in the Mainland that will have to be covered in the remaining period of roughly two months,” he declared, amazed at this expectation.
 
He also demanded that Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda and NEC chairman Justice Damian Lubuva   tell the public the truth about BVR kits, as NEC is set to fail to accomplish the task accordingly we.
 
“Although NEC is hindering them to tell the public the shortcomings of the BVR kits that should not stop them telling the public the truth about those kits,” he said.
 
However, he added that, since NEC has failed to educate the public on BVR kits, political parties will continue campaigning on BVR kits to the general public, and for us we will tell the public both good and shortcomings of the kits.
 
“Top officials believe that by telling the public shortcomings of BVR kits this could result in misunderstandings in the country. But we will tell the public so that we can rescue them from such misunderstandings,” he stated. 
 
“We will not be quiet at all, so as to rescue the country from unnecessary problems. Instead we want the premier and NEC to tell the public what is really taking place,” he emphasized.
 
“During the 18th parliamentary meeting, we raised a motion on BVR kits and it was agreed that NEC would meet with political parties. The meeting was held but important questions were not answered,” he stated.
 
The bipartisan parliamentary leadership committee met in Dodoma and discussed the matter and agreed that the committee will meet with NEC but until now no further meeting has been held.
 
NEC is asking political parties to mobilize people to come out to register but does not wish that the parties address problems with the BVR kits, which endangers effective registration of voters.  “Surprisingly we sent a letter to the central police station informing them that we will have a public rally in Njombe region but they ordered that the rally should not be held,” he said.
 
The police said it could not allow the meeting as the BVR registration process was expected to be taking place there at that time, he said.
 
 Despite the police ban they will hold a meeting as the party plans to launch RtoR BVR (Region by Region) discussion on BVR kits.
 
“We are planning to launch our new operation on BVR kits identified as RtoR so that we can emphasize to the public on what to expect in BVR-based voter registration,” he declared.
 
On Thursday, NEC chairman Justice Lubuva said in Dar es Salaam that the extent to which they can register voters depends entirely on the number of BVR kits they receive. “I am confident that the registration will end before the day of the referendum,” he stated. “We will let the country know if this is not achieved within the given timeline.”
 
NEC would not hold the referendum before updating its register to ensure that all 23.9 million eligible voters have the time and opportunity to be included in the new register, he affirmed.
 
Opposition leaders and even ruling party officials have expressed worries on the issue, declaring that NEC will be to blame if things go wrong with the BVR-based registration process.
 
 NEC warned political parties about evading registration using suspicions of BVR kits as an excuse for disturbances in the coming voter registration process.
 
Justice Lubuva said that the exercise involves providing education to regional coordinators and voter registration officials on improvements needed in the permanent voters’ registration book.
 
 Leaders of political parties were unhappy with the exercise and have been trying to express dissatisfaction over the technology since then, the NEC chairman added.  
 
Share:

0 comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Popular Posts

Unordered List

Pages

Blog Archive


Copyright © MASWAYETU BLOG | Powered by Blogger