10 Mar 2016

The Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) principal elections officer in Tutume, Ms Basadi Ntshutelang, has informed the Party Liaison Committee (PLC) for Nkange constituency that prior to the 2019 general elections, there will be no delimitation and demarcation process.

She said this at a consultative meeting in Tutume on Tuesday.

The delimitation process, she said, took place after every 10 years following the national population census.

Ms Ntshutelang pointed out that in terms of polling stations, there would be some changes taking into consideration the 2014 post elections assessment of voter registration and voting at some polling stations.

In addition, Ms Ntshutelang said since last year May, they had been assigned by IEC secretary to start consultation on aligning polling station according to the polling districts with reflection on the number of voters recorded at these stations.

She further noted that some changes such as removing or adding new ones would be as a result of low voter registration and the location as well as the use of tents.

The officer added that security was a major concern in elections and therefore they had decided to utilise government facilities where possible as polling stations.

This, she said, would be convenient to the general public and in terms of security, there were secure unlike in open spaces where they only set up tents, adding that it was also cost effective since they did not have to employee temporary security officers to protect the equipment.

She nonetheless noted that some polling stations remained in use although not secure because there were government facilities in the vicinity and they could not remove them because of the distance to the closest or next station.

Ms Ntshutelang cited the example of Maitengwe gate polling station, which she said was almost 40km away from the next station.

Furthermore, she highlighted to the committee that since they started last year, they had made the second final draft of the proposals to the changes to be made on polling stations, which they were going to submit to the secretary of IEC.

This was for purposes of documentation and upon being documented and published in the Government Gazette, it therefore meant that the polling station outlined would be the ones used in the next general elections.

Appreciating the office’s efforts to consult and get feedback from the public, the political parties’ representatives suggested that in future, when the commission consults the public at kgotla meetings, representatives of the parties should be part of the delegation so that they too can get first-hand information instead of a report of what the public has proposed. Ends