14 Mar 2019

Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Nonofo Molefhi has reaffirmed the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) commitment to engage the citizenry for enhancing their participation in the electoral process and ensuring delivery of credible elections.

Presenting the IEC’s 2019/2020 budget proposals, Mr Molefhi requested Parliament to approve the proposed amount of P298.3 million, of which P67.6 million was for the recurrent budget and P230.7 million for development budget.

The 2019/2020 recurrent budget, he said, represented an increase of 5.6 per cent more over the 2018/2019 approved budget.

He said P37 million of the proposed recurrent budget would be channeled towards salaries and allowances and P5.9 million for travelling and transport.

The remaining amount, he said, would be shared among departmental services, maintenance and running expenses, government hospitality and training.

Regarding advertising and publicity of the 2019 general elections and postal charges, the minister proposed an allocation of P7.4 million, which would also cater for other general expenses and supplies.

Under the development budget, Mr Molefhi highlighted that of the P230 million requested, P228 million would be required for the 2019 general elections while P2.4 million would be for the completion of the Tutume office block construction project.

He stated the commission had submitted a request for additional funds to cater for the anticipated supplementary voter registration.

Minister Molefhi further stated that 750 841 voters had registered at the close of the general voter registration exercise. He said the  figure included 881 external voters.

He added that the IEC continued to enhance the participation of youth in electoral processes through democracy youth ambassadors who were trained to do peer education on democracy and electoral processes to the out of school youth.

Mr Molefhi decried lack of limited capacity in terms of human resource, budget and vehicles, saying they forfeited the commission’s efforts to do civic and voter education across the country.

He, however, stated that the interface between the Election Management System (EMS) and Land Information System (LIS) had not been successful due to the delayed completion of the Land Administration Procedures, Capacity and Systems (LAPCAS).

“The interface was aimed at addressing challenges of voter trafficking, cross border registration, use of non-residential and non-existent plots as well as oversubscribed plots experienced in the past voter registration,” he said. ENDS