How new voters list will be made

A biometric voter registration (BVR) kit can register a voter within five minutes even if a person has deformities.

The kit includes a laptop, two batteries, a fingerprint sensor, two flask disks and a webcam for taking the applicant’s image.

The kits, delivered to the electoral commission last week. (READ: First batch of BVR kits arrive from Paris) They were supplied by French company Safran Morpho.

According to the firm’s ICT expert Mwesigwe Mwendwa, only people who will be registering for the first time will be required to provide all their details.

He said those who voted in the 2007 General Election would be required to update their information in the 2007 register, which had been entered in the laptops.

“What will be needed (of them) is to visit the registration centre and within a couple of minutes after producing the identity card the clerks will take the fingerprint and portrait,” he said.

The solar-powered kit will be maintained by a team of experts who will visit voter registration centres countrywide.

Mr Mwendwa said the company’s staff would also provide back-up services to the registration clerks to minimise inefficiencies.

“We are keen to ensure that the kits that were procured are adequate to register the voters and store the data that will be communicated to the regional headquarters on daily basis without delays,” he said.

He said at the start of voter listing, the process may be slow before the clerks become competent in handling the equipment.

On Tuesday, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission announced that voter listing would again be delayed to allow for the training of clerks on the use of the BVR kits.

The commission was scheduled to conduct the exercise from November 12 to December 11.

But top IEBC officials revealed on Tuesday that the timetable had been revised and the training of the 30,000 registration clerks would start on November 11 and end on November 17.

The clerks will be trained in two batches of 15,000 each, with the first group receiving lessons between November 11 and 13. The second batch will be trained from November 14 to 17.

On Wednesday, voter registration director Emmaculate Kasait attributed the delay to the late arrival of the BVR kits. Her comments came as The National Alliance opposed the postponement of the exercise and read mischief in IEBC’s move.

Officials of the party claimed the postponement was part of a plot to delay the March 4 polls.

“The move by the electoral body to move this date has thrown some of our plans into disarray. For instance, we had planned to undertake our party primaries on December 10. This is no longer possible,” said nominated MP Amina Abdallah.

At the same time, TNA chairman Johnson Sakaja criticised the move to have aspirants vetted by credit reference bureaus, KRA, Helb, among others.

He said the clearance being undertaken to ascertain whether aspirants had defaulted on their loans was illegal as the requirement was abolished.

He also denied that TNA presidential aspirant Uhuru Kenyatta and his URP counterpart William Ruto were in Burundi to sign a pre-election pact.