·
My fellow Commissioners,
·
The Regional Elections Officer (C), Mr
Wellingtone Katantha
·
Team Leader for the facilitators
·
Electoral Commission Staff,
·
Distinguished Participants
·
Members of the media,
·
Ladies and Gentlemen
I feel greatly honoured today to make an address
before the start of a crucial and important training in our electoral calendar like
this one.
I should start by congratulating all of you for
being offered an opportunity to work with the Commission as Quality Control
Managers. As the name of your post
suggests, your role will directly contribute to the quality of the primary
document for a credible election, which is the voters’ roll.
During the past elections, we had cases whereby
registered voters with valid voter IDs could find their names missing on the
voting day, their names bearing wrong pictures, their names having wrong sex, their
names being found in wrong centres and even spelling errors. These challenges
have dogged us in the past. Let me state
here that as a Commission we were not happy with their continued recurrence. Our
analysis shows the problems originate at data capture. We would like,
therefore, you QCMs to nip these issues in the bud, hence your recruitment and
the provision of this training.
The Commission has trained other Quality Control
Managers who are currently involved in registration work. However, the
Commission decided to increase the numbers because of the demand to finish
registration earlier before the rains start.
The other teams started registration in the South and are coming up. You
will be deployed to Chitipa and you will be coming southwards.
There are 200 of you here after tomorrow’s
session you will all go back to your homes.
Our staff will call you but we shall start with 150 of you and others
will be invited later. The call up will
depend on your performance. Those who
will excel will be called first and so on and so forth. Trainers will be assessing you in the course
of the training. Therefore, the need for
you to take the training seriously.
For the 2014 Tripartite Elections, the Commission
decided that everyone should register; whether they registered before or not.
In common person’s language, anyone who was born before 20th May,
1996 will have to register because they will have attained the age of 18 on the
polling day.
The fresh registration is
offering an opportunity for the Commission to deal away with the problems,
which I mentioned above and in addition to that; our voters’ roll was bloated
with dead persons. At the moment, the nation does not have a systematic means
of reporting deaths which could help to have dead persons automatically removed
from the voters roll. We rely on goodwill of relatives to come during
registration and report all persons who passed on. This approach too has not
been effective because our cultural beliefs discourage people from mentioning
the dead.
As Quality Control Managers,
you are coming in to ensure that the quality of the data we are capturing is
perfect. You are the last persons to correct any mistake or omission during
registration before the process goes on to a machine. With computers, you all
know that it is garbage in, garbage out. If we feed it wrong information, we
don’t expect it to correct the mistake. So, if we get it right at data capture
we are on course to build a credible voters’ roll.
May I also draw your
attention to one area where we may face challenges if you don’t handle it
carefully. We will register those who
have not turned 18 yet but
will turn 18 on the day of polling. These ones will be applying to register on
the day they will turn 18, so their day of application for registration will be
their birthday. If you put the day they come to the centre as their day of
applying for registration, the computer will reject the name on the basis that
they are underage. So please take special attention to the training on this
area.
I am also reliably informed
that on the second day of your training camera operators will join you. During
registration, each one of you will be paired with a camera operator from one
phase to the other. It is your responsibility to ensure that both of you know
the camera operation procedure and have adequate knowledge regarding when one
is of age to apply to register. I am saying this, ladies and gentlemen, as the
first point of entry for registration is a camera operator who will verify the
registrant’s eligibility before taking their photo.
Having explained your
crucial role, I should urge you to be vigilant and dedicated to your work. We
do not build a credible register in one day but it is a collection of your
articulate attention paid to each and every registration form administered by
your team.
Therefore, let me warn you
against being complacent and getting used to your work. This is a common
challenge when doing monotonous work, but take this as a special case. Take it
that each form deserves careful attention. We have dismissed non performers
during the earlier phases and will not hesitate to dismiss you at any point.
Let me also warn you against
abuse of registration materials. Some people have been caught taking and
printing personal photos using registration materials. This we will not
tolerate and if found you will be fired. You also have a responsibility of
ensuring that materials are kept safe.
As Quality Control Manager,
you job requires fulltime attendance and absenteeism is not tolerated. Some
QCMs and Camera operators have been fired for absconding work and negligence.
You need be on your guard all the time you are doing your work, pay proper
attention to detail and instruction. You will also need to be courteous to
people coming to register. You will meet people of various social status and
you need to treat all of them with respect.
Before I resume my seat, let me inform you that
registration centres open to the public at 8AM and close at 4PM. We are opening
during these time because we know there is need for preparatory work in the
morning before the centres open and also need for time for back office
operations after the centres close. We had cases where some staff were closing
registration centres and returning people before 4PM. These were sternly
warned. As a Commission would like to
ensure that every eligible voter is registered so we encourage you to process
the same day everyone who presents themselves for registration before the
closing time. In the event that you are unable to process them the same day,
the names of such persons should be recorded and processed with priority the
following day.
As a Commission, we have also noticed that people
have a tendency to come to the centres on the last day, a move that creates
congestion. So I advise you that on the last day, if there are people whom you
are unable to process them the same day, you should record their names and
process them the following day. This is a demand driven-extension to registration
days. But I should emphasise that this only applies to person who have
presented themselves for registration before 4PM on the
14th day of registration.
In closing I should thank everyone who has come
here. May God bless you and bless our nation, remember, in everything we do, we
are putting the voters first and the focus and energies for should be towards a
credible voters’ roll.
I have the honour and
privilege to declare this training opened.
Thank you.
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