By Moses Chibaya.
Government of Zimbabwe has taken over the procurement of the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) which was supposed to acquire the buy the kits.
Addressing journalists in Harare Wednesday morning chairperson of the electoral body, Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) Rita Makarau revealed the development.
“I also want to make this announcement at this stage to say that the government of Zimbabwe has come on board and has decided that it will fund the acquisition of the BVR kits instead of letting the UNDP do it on its own,” Makarau said.
She added: “So the government is now on board whatever the successful bidder will require the government will pay.”
Asked why the government decided to pay the ZEC chairperson deferred the question to government.
“I wish I could speak on behalf of government…you may want to ask government…I don’t know why they decided to come up now,” Makarau said.
Concerned journalists asked if the process was not going to be affected by lack of transparency and corruption activities by government officials.
“We are in charge of the process as ZEC and we will make sure that there is no corruption,” Makarau said.
The bio-metric polling station based voter registration process is supposed to be financed jointly by the government of Zimbabwe and UNDP.
The ZEC chairperson said the Commission had received US$900 thousand to carry out the mapping exercise and has to date used $400 thousand.
Makarau said 12 companies were shortlisted on the tendering process.
“Of the 12 companies seven are said to have failed technically and five are said to be compliant. Out of the five the committee will select three companies that will bring their equipment into the country and demonstrate on the ground and after that one supplier will be selected,” she said.
Zimbabwe will in 2018 hold its general elections.
Comments
About Author
