News / National
Mixed feeling about Biometric Voter Registration
05 Nov 2017 at 02:36hrs | Views
Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) requirements have sparked mixed feelings on among citizens with some saying the requirements are discouraging them to register.
A regular citizen from rural areas who only wanted to be identified as Ncube told NewsDay that registering is now strenuous for people in rural areas because they have to travelling long distances to get approval of proof of residence from village chiefs 'sabhuku' and they do not consider that in national IDs proof of residences would be already there.
"All along when people registered, they only went with identification, but now they have to bring proof of residence also,and for us based in rural areas we have to provide letters from our''sabhuku" ,Ncube said.
He said, to make matters worse to make matters worse if you lost your national identity card you should go and take another one where you initially took the last one and it is really expensive considering that some of the rural citizens need a lot of money to get to that initial place.
He said Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) tried by all means to put as many centres as possible so that people would not go long distances but still it is not efficient.
"We still walk long distances despite what the ZEC people did for us and this makes us think twice about this registration issue because some of some will be needing to do enquires first before we register and as such if the centre is far going back for the second time would really be hard", he said.
Meanwhile, Primrose Usai, a regular citizen as well says despite the distance, the BVR programme is good because in future we would just be looking at our names on computers and there won't be any need of those proof of residences.
A regular citizen from rural areas who only wanted to be identified as Ncube told NewsDay that registering is now strenuous for people in rural areas because they have to travelling long distances to get approval of proof of residence from village chiefs 'sabhuku' and they do not consider that in national IDs proof of residences would be already there.
"All along when people registered, they only went with identification, but now they have to bring proof of residence also,and for us based in rural areas we have to provide letters from our''sabhuku" ,Ncube said.
He said, to make matters worse to make matters worse if you lost your national identity card you should go and take another one where you initially took the last one and it is really expensive considering that some of the rural citizens need a lot of money to get to that initial place.
He said Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) tried by all means to put as many centres as possible so that people would not go long distances but still it is not efficient.
"We still walk long distances despite what the ZEC people did for us and this makes us think twice about this registration issue because some of some will be needing to do enquires first before we register and as such if the centre is far going back for the second time would really be hard", he said.
Meanwhile, Primrose Usai, a regular citizen as well says despite the distance, the BVR programme is good because in future we would just be looking at our names on computers and there won't be any need of those proof of residences.
Source - NewsDay
