MHRC tips Salima on voter registration

The Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) has equipped election stakeholders in Salima with strategies to improve turnout during the voter registration process.

MHRC principal child rights officer Jeremiah Mpaso on Wednesday told organisations involved in elections that Salima should learn from districts that have completed voter registration and deal with the problems they encountered.

“During our monitoring of the registration process in some districts, we observed a number of factors that forced some eligible voters not to register. The problems included untrained staff in some centres and faulty cameras,” said Mpaso.

He said some people turned up to register on the last day of the process.

“As a result, registration centres were overwhelmed during the closing hours or during the last days of the exercise and in the end some people missed the opportunity to register,” said Mpaso.

He asked the stakeholders to conduct more sensitisation meetings to advise people to register ahead of the beginning of the exercise on December 5 2013.

“There should be more monitoring where problems are noted and reported early,” said Mpaso.