Africa-Press – Botswana. Registration for the 2024 general elections is going well in the Serowe District, with 108 polling stations registering a total of over 4 000 voters in three days, from January 5 to 7.
This was explained by the district commissioner, Ms Angelinah Leano in an interview with BOPA on Wednesday.
Ms Leano said although the exercise was going well, there were some challenges.
She mentioned that they had had to look for replacements for 23 registration officers who had pulled out.
She said some civil servants who were part of the exercise went on transfers, some went for further studies and for youth it was due to job opportunities.
“On January 3, we conducted training for the 23 new registration officers after which Independent Electoral Commission gazetted them,” said Ms Leano.
Ms Leano highlighted that they were also faced with a challenge of hard to reach areas due to limited mobile networks.
She said thus supervisors were forced to go to the polling stations physically, and with shortage of transport and the places being too far, Ms Leano added that it was close to impossible.
She said the visits were meant to collect statistics of how the registration was going.
She said such places were seven in Serowe South, eight in each of Serowe North and West.
Furthermore, Ms Leano said they were having a problem with the mobile toilet supplier who had not been able to provide toilets in some areas.
She said she was hopeful though that the matter would be resolved soon.
Another challenge she said was finding polling stations after the dates for the registration exercise changed.
She said most polling stations were supposed to be in schools and now with schools re-opened, the polling stations changed from classes to guard rooms, to culture rooms and old staffrooms.
Ms Leano sdecried shortage of tents, hence they sought accommodation in schools, but added that they had since sought assistance from other constituencies and registration was going as planned.
Ms Leano said news reaching her office was that there were voters who intended to register in areas that were not their places of residence.
She said this was discovered when the culprits were asked to produce their plot numbers and wards.
“We have since availed three vehicles with PA system per constituency to mobilise voters to register and remind them of registration requirements,” said Ms Leano.
She added that they had encountered two cases of senior citizens whose identity cards were expired and urged children to help their parents check their ID expiry dates.
She said at this point, most people showing up to register were older people.
Ms Leano said there were regular meetings with supervisors and registration officers, to appreciate challenges across all the three constituencies and come up with solutions.
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