MEC will not spare non-performing staff
The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) says it will not spare any of its staff deemed to be underperforming in the registration centres across the country.
Emmanuel Chinkwita-Phiri, a MEC commissioner, said this when he opened a two-day training of quality control managers (QCM) at the Natural Resources College (NRC) in Lilongwe on Monday.
“The duty of a QCM is a very critical one to this whole exercise, therefore, the need for the working staff to be as diligent as possible. We have noted some elements of negligence and some people have been caught abusing registration materials by taking and printing personal photos,” said Chinkwita-Phiri.
The commissioner, therefore, implored the hired staff to be vigilant and dedicated to their work so that in turn the commission attains its goal of having a credible voters register.
“We do not want to exclude some people to participate in the elections because of poor workmanship. We want to have a near perfect voters roll because we cannot say we will have a voters roll which is 100% perfect because it is human beings which are working on this,” said Chinkwita-Phiri.
He said according to experience, the problems that the commission has faced in the past elections emanated from the mistakes that were done when capturing data during registration and he, therefore, stressed on the need to double check on all the captured data.
MEC has hired an extra cohort of QCM with the aim of finishing the registration earlier than the initially planned date of January 18 as the registration enters its fifth phase.
On Saturday October 5, MEC announced the reopening of some registration centres across the country which did not carry out the exercise for 14 days as required by law.—Mana
