It also said it could not avail an electronic voters roll
to stakeholders at the moment fearing that it could be tampered with.
Zec chief elections officer Utoile Silaigwana said this in
a letter dated November 14 addressed to the Election Resource Centre (ERC), an
independent election watchdog.
This was after Zec was given a seven-day ultimatum by ERC
to release the document.
“The Zec takes note of the concerns raised by your client.
The costs of providing a hard copy of the national roll is, as you acknowledge,
regulated by Statutory Instrument 145 of 2022 which we believe are the
reasonable costs of producing the same,” Silaigwana said.
“Regarding the provision of an electronic copy of the
voters roll, we reiterate that we are in the process of enhancing the security
of the electronic voters roll. We believe it is not lost to your client that
there are elements that are bent on tampering with our systems and thus bring
the integrity of the electoral process into disrepute. We will advise you once
the processes are complete and when you can access this electronic copy.”
Early this week, Zec accused data experts, Team Pachedu, of
hacking its ICT system, and threatened to cause their arrest after the
organisation exposed a number of irregularities on the voters roll.
Independent watchdogs and the opposition are demanding an
independent audit of the voters roll.
Silaigwana also said Zec was currently busy with the
delimitation exercise, redrawing electoral boundaries, ahead of the 2023
elections.
“The commission is not averse to engaging or dialoguing
with your client, but ask that they be patient with us as we work on a critical
electoral process (delimitation of electoral boundaries) which process we must
complete before year-end if the outcome thereof is to be used in the next
general election. We thus are unable to engage them at this time,” Silaigwana
said.
Zec said it had started a consultative process with local
authorities to split or merge wards that have registered voters above or below
the average threshold. Newsday
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