Africa-Press – Namibia. Paulus Sifire, Kavango East Electoral Commission of Namibia’s (ECN) regional electoral officer says preparations are on track in the region for the oncoming polls.
A total of 215 teams will be ensuring that eligible voters cast their votes. “Out of the 215 total, 128 are fixed teams, while 87 are mobile teams, they will man the 475 poling points that we have in the region in terms of regional council elections and 61 for local authority elections,’’ he said in an exclusive interview with New Era on Wednesday.
Sifire said in terms of election materials the region has received the ballot booths already, which consist of ballot papers in sealed boxes which political party’s and independent candidates sealed at the ECN head office and sent them to the regions.
“We have also deployed them to various constituencies at police stations. We have also deployed sensitive and non-sensitive materials to constituencies were deployment will take place,” he said.
On the part of training, election agents and police officers, poling officers concluded their training recently.
For constituencies that will have regional and local authority elections (Rundu urban and Mukwe constituency) there will be 7 polling officials per team and for constituencies that will only have regional council elections, such as Ndiyona, Mashare, Ndonga Linena and Rundu rural constituencies will have 6 polling officers per team.
“In terms of private vehicles, we wanted 329 vehicles, but so far we only managed to secure 320 vehicles and still in short of 9 vehicle.
Hopefully by the time of deployment we will get all vehicles in place, but that will not actually hinder our operations because the government garage has also availed a bus for us that will move along our national roads to deploy those that will be stationed along the tarred and gravel roads,” he said.
The ECN have also secured a collation centre in each of the six constituencies, where election results from different polling stations are collected, verified, and combined to determine the final outcome of the elections, which is crucial for the official and transparent process of tallying votes, with responsibilities including the summation of votes for each candidate and the final declaration of results by returning officers.
“Though we concluded the training for polling officials we have selected presiding officers that will undergo a refresher training, slated on 21 to 22 November. Special voting is on 24 November and 6 teams will conduct it, one per constituency, overall we are prepared, just waiting for deployment,’’ Sifire said.
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