Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) says it will commence voters’ verification exercise for registered voters of the May 2019 tripartite general election next week.
In an interview with Malawi News Agency, MEC Public Relation Officer, Sangwani Mwafulirwa said the voters’ register inspection exercise will start on December 10, 2018 and end on January 9, 2019.
“The exercise will be conducted in four phases of five days and all registered voters should go and check how their details are appearing in the voters’ register,” Mwafurirwa said.
On registration of new voters, Mwafulirwa stressed that the commission will not be registering new voters during the exercise.
During this period, the commission, in conjunction with Malawi Electoral Support Network (MESN), has devised a mechanism where registered voters will be able to verify their details free of charge through TNM and Airtel mobile networks by sending an SMS with their voter registration number to 5VOTE (58683).
Meanwhile, MESN Chairperson, Steve Duwa has urged Malawians to take voters’ register inspection exercise seriously so that they are able to vote come May, 2019.
“It becomes a challenge and sad for one to fail to vote due to missing information even though one registered. This is the time to verify if one’s particulars are properly captured,” said Duwa.
The electoral body will start phase one of voters’ register verification from December 10 to 14 next week covering Kasungu, Kasungu Municipality Nkhotakota, Ntchisi, Dowa, Salima, Mchinji and Dedza.
The second phase will start from December 18 to 22 and councils to be covered are Lilongwe, Lilongwe City, Ntcheu, Blantyre, Blantyre City, Mwaza, Neno, Nsanje and Chikwawa.
According to Mwafulirwa, phase three will start from December 26 to 30 and will cover Mangochi, Mangochi Town, Balaka, Machinga, Zomba, Zomba City, Chiradzulu, Thyolo, Luchenza Municipality, Phalombe and Mulanje.
In the fourth and last phase, people will be able to verify their details in the councils of Chitipa, Kalonga, Rumphi, Nkhata Bay, Likoma, Mzuzu City and Mzimba and the exercise will start from January 5 to 9, 2019.
MEC registered about 6,856,295 voters for the coming 2019 tripartite general election.
