Information and Communications Technology Association of Malawi (Ictam) has advised Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) to engage multiple network providers to ensure smooth transmission of results in the September 16 General Election.
Ictam’s position comes after network glitches last week marred MEC’s results management system dry run as data transmission either delayed or failed between constituency, district and national tally centres.
Speaking in an interview on Saturday, Ictam president Clarence Gama said under normal circumstances, for critical exercise such as elections, redundant connections is critical.
He said Ictam made similar recommendations during one of MEC’s stakeholder consultative meetings after observing that network connections can sometimes be unreliable.
Said Gama: “For such a critical exercise, MEC should ensure that they have a redundant connection. A good example is if you are using a local ISP [internet service provider] say TNM, for example, then you can take another service provider like Starlink which uses an entirely different route when transmitting data.
“In this case, we even encourage the third one because you can’t take risks with such critical exercise.”
University of Malawi political analyst Associate Professor Boniface Dulani in a separate interview last week raised similar concerns on the need for MEC to at least have more than one Internet service provider as a backup.
He noted that MEC was only relying on mobile service provider’s network and said the network glitches is something that the commission needs to look into seriously.
Said Dulani: “During the dry run there were only few polling centres that were transmitting the results and if they were having those problems, now multiplying that by all the constituencies, that is going to bring a lot of strain on the system.
“So any slowness or delays of the system is just going to raise suspicions and doubts about the credibility of the electoral process. That is why I wish that they [MEC] would use other network providers.”
When contacted, MEC director of media and public relations Sangwani Mwafulirwa referred this reporter to MEC commissioner Limbikani Kamlongera’s earlier comment at the end of the dry run.
Reacting to the delays and failure in results transmission from some constituency tally centres, Kamlongera attributed the issue to the staff on the ground who she said did not record adequate information.
“So that is not a challenge because for us we are focusing on how the system works, and the system is live and real time. In as far as simulation was concerned, it did exactly what it was supposed to do,” she said.
During the dry run spot-checks, The Nation established that the exercise was marred by technical glitches that saw some constituency tally centres completely fail to transmit results to the district tally centre.
For instance, at Mbayani Teachers Development Centre (TDC) Tally Centre, MEC staff managed to transmit presidential results only but failed to transmit results for parliamentary and local government elections.
While at Bangwe and Limbe TDCs constituency tally centres, election management devices (EMDs) delayed for about an hour to transmit the results to Blantyre City main tally centre at Blantyre Secondary School.
