Party monitors at the just-ended second phase of the registration exercise in Blantyre have commended the National Initiative for Civic Education (NICE) Trust for its extensive role in educating the masses in the district.
The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) released the preliminary figures of 2,422,595 people registered in the second phase which covered Blantyre, Blantyre City, Dowa, Kasungu, Kasungu Municipality, Likoma, Luchenza Municipality, Mchinji, Nkhata Bay, Ntcheu, Rumphi, Thyolo, Zomba City and Zomba District Council.
From the figure, Blantyre City registered a total of 559,462 as compared to Blantyre rural which has 287,044 people in the books.
Some of the party monitors found at Ng’onga, Chikwembere, Mlambe II, and Namalondwe Primary Schools in the areas of Traditional Authorities Kapeni and Chigalu said they experienced low turn out due to various reasons including rains.
“Civic education is extensively done here in our area, and we must also commend NICE which has been going around with its public address system, but maybe because of the rains that we received this week forced people to attend to their fields and we hope the figures will improve towards the end,” said one monitor at Mlambe II.
Foursquare Church ground centre which is situated at Mbayani township is one of the centres which had the highest figures of registered voters.
Party monitors there said the turnout was encouraging even though the figures seemed low as compared to the 2019/2020 polls.
“We believe the decision to split the centres has contributed to the figures you see. However, we must understand that the figures haven’t dropped, they have just been split because in 2019 we had two centres here in Mbayani, and now we have four. Otherwise, civic education was done perfectly by NICE Trust and MEC,” added another monitor.
The monitors also observed that this year, the number of new registrants has increased. One of the MEC supervisors at Ng’onga primary school centre, Judith Nyirenda commended the collaboration between NICE Trust and MEC civic educators in the area.
NICE Trust District Programme Officer for Blantyre, Gloria Ngosi Maulidi said they visited all centres with public address systems to woo people to register.
“It has indeed been a mixed outcome, but as civic educators we played our role diligently. This year we have seen a lot of new registrants willing to take part in the elections next year. I just plead with MEC and the National Registration Bureau to make efforts to have those new registrants to be able to register before the registration period is closed,” she said.
The second phase started on November 9 until 22.
“We believe the decision to split the centres has contributed to the figures you see. ”
Party Monitor
