Funding stalls Zimbabwe voter registration

The Registrar General's office has raised concern over the failure by treasury to release funds for the mobile voter registration exercise.

Addressing journalists in Harare, Registrar General, Tobaiwa Mudede said lack of funds at a time the country is preparing for two important plebiscites, the referendum and the general elections, is putting the department under a lot of pressure.

He said efforts to get a favourable response from the Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti have failed to yield any positive results.

However, Mr Mudede could not be drawn into revealing how much the department requires for the voter registration exercise.

He also dismissed as baseless allegations by some sections of the media, claiming that the department is giving first preference in the voter registration to members of the uniformed forces.

Mr Mudede said utterances by Mr Biti, alleging that two thirds of the people on the voters' roll are deceased is malicious and should be treated with the contempt it deserves as he is implying that two thirds of the people who voted in 2008 are now dead.

In 2008, the voters' roll had 5,9 million people.

Mr Biti told a news conference in Pretoria that two thirds of names on the voters roll are dead.

Working with the number of voters registered in 2008, the two thirds translates to about 2 million.