Staff Reporter

Home Affairs and cultural Heritage, Permanent Secretary Aaron Nhepera says the Civil Registry Department will soon launch a nationwide mobile registration exercise for citizens to acquire national identification documents ahead of the 2023 harmonised general elections.

In an interview recently, Mr Nhepera says the exercise to commence in April will coincide with phase two of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) Bio-metric registration blitz.

“The Civil Registry Department has planned to embark on a nationwide mobile registration exercise that is set to give people birth certificates, death certificates as well as identification cards. This exercise is set to begin in early April and to go on for the next six month and is timed to coincide with voter registration that ZEC has already commenced by end of which we hope to have registered about two million people,” said Mr Nhepera.

Meanwhile, Government has set aside ZWL$8.2 billion for the mobile voter registration and delimitation blitz. Addressing a press conference in Harare yesterday, ZEC Chief Elections Officer, Mr Utoile Silaigwana said the commission presented an estimated budget of ZWL$4.5 billion for the mobile voter registration exercise which the treasury has already started funding, while the estimated budget for the by-elections is ZWL$3.7 billion.

Mr Silaigwana said that the commission has established 210 voter registration teams to cater for the 210 constituencies in addition to the 63 district offices and 10 provincial office centres.

“These teams will be mobile and will be deployed at the advertised registration centres for periods ranging from 1-3 days before moving on to the next registration centre within the constituencies,” said Mr Silaigwana adding that the teams are expected to cover a combined total of 2 723 centres during the first phase. He urged members of the public to be on the lookout for voter educators for information as well as to listen on radio, television and ZEC social media platforms.

The mobile voter registration exercise for the impending delimitation exercise, which was initially pencilled for early December last year commenced yesterday and will be carried out in two phases. Phase one will run from today up to February 28, while phase two will be conducted from April 11 to 30, 2022.