Zimbabwe gas lamps to light up 2014 polls

The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has planned to borrow 10 500 gas lamps and 350 tents from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) during the May 20 Tripartite Elections.

MEC chairperson Maxon Mbendera announced the plans to borrow the gas lamps and tents from Zimbabwe at the fourth National Elections Consultative Forum (Necof) held in Lilongwe on Friday.

“The gas lamps were observed during the past elections in Zimbabwe where they were effective and provided excellent lighting to the process in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has agreed to our request.

“They will lend us 10 500 gas lamps and 350 tents for polling. The commission will use a mixture of the lamps and generators we already have. Easy to reach places where backup can easily be provided will use the generators. In remote and hard-to-reach places we will use the gas lamps only,” Mbendera told the meeting, according to a statement made available to The Nation.

During the meeting, the commission also provided status report on other activities which are ongoing and planned activities for immediate implementation.

Mbendera presented figures of registration of voters which started on July 22 and ended on December 18 last year. At the end of the exercise, a total 7 537 548 voters were registered nationwide. This represents 94.1 percent of the projected total for the exercise which was put at 8 009 734 registrants.

Mbendera said there might be some changes to the figures during computerisation.

“This is because the figures were based on raw statistics on daily registration records which could have introduced in human error. Let me make it clear here that the output of the computerisation should never be linked to the advantage or disadvantage of any political party,” he said.