Voter kits due on October 8, says IEBC

The first batch of the 15,000 biometric kits to be used to register voters will arrive in Kenya on October 8, the chairman of Kenya’s electoral commission Issack Hassan has said.

The kits will be used to train the staff who will do the registration across the 1,450 county wards all over the country, so that when the final delivery is made, the voter registration exercise can then begin.

Addressing a news conference at Parliament buildings in Nairobi, Mr Hassan said the deal was signed on Monday, between the Canadian Commercial Corporation on one hand, and the Treasury and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), on the other.

The deal also noted that the rest of the kits will be delivered in October 25 – a month after the agreement was signed.

“The Canadian Corporation has undertaken to ensure delivery and implementation of the systems within the agreed timelines. This project is vital to the commission and to the country at large, because, it will make it possible to register voters and capture the biometric and other data pertaining to them,” said Mr Hassan Tuesday.

The agreement signed on Monday will cover the purchase of hardware and software for the biometric voter registration.

The IEBC chairman, spoke just moments after meeting the Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee, and the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee.

He said the commission had booked a date with the House committees on Wednesday to give the details of the manner in which the IEBC will meet its target to register 22.5 million voters.

The working numbers before the committee was that the IEBC could register all those voters within 30 days. The IEBC wants to register 50 people daily in each of the 1,450 county wards, so that by the end of the thirty days, they will have the 22.5 million voters.

The IEBC chairman was flanked by his deputy Lilian Mahiri and CEO James Oswago.

The commission has indicated that there be an initial delivery of 2,000 kits for training the trainers, and as the training is going on, the IEBC gets 5,000 kits to roll out the training to the grassroots –about 29,000 officers are required to help do the job, before the end of the 14 days, so that when the rest of the consignment arrives the registration of voters begins.

The IEBC is under pressure to ensure that the General Election is held on March 4, 2013.