Malawi's Electoral Commission (EC) chairperson Anastasia Msosa on Thursday said her body had recruited over 500 primary school teachers to assist in solving the problems facing the country's voters' roll.
Msosa conceded that this year's voters' roll was facing a lot of irregularities which, among them, were missing names, photos and duplication of names.
"With this additional staff, the anomalies will be easily solved and soon the names which were missing or duplicated will be corrected," she said.
However, political analyst Mabvuto Bamusi feared that there could be voter apathy in this year's Presidential and Parliamentary Elections because more people would be discouraged by the anomalies made in the voters' roll.
"There is an urgent need for the electoral body to solve these problems, otherwise the country's general elections will face voter apathy," he said.
Meanwhile, Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) are calling on the Electoral Commission to conduct for yet another verification exercise.
"We at CHRR are worried that if these things are not put in order forthwith the whole electoral process would be called into question. As this could likely be a major contributing factor to voter apathy because voters are likely not going be sure whether their names will appear on the roll on the polling day," said CHRR executive director Undule Mwakasungula in a statement.
The body said the mess in the electoral process is likely to be fertile breeding ground for vote rigging.
"We are also calling all stakeholders in the electoral process including traditional leaders, civil society organizations, and political party leaders to call upon all registered voters to go and verify their names once EC announce new dates for verification of the voters roll.
"We have all the hope that Malawi can afford better and credible elections," said CHRR. Malawi registered 5.7 million voters for the 19 May 2009 general elections. – (APA and additional reporting by Nyasa Times)
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