BY PROBLEM MASAU THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) is reportedly failing to pay its workers who conducted the voters roll inspection and education exercises.
The voters roll inspection exercise ran from July 17 to 26.
Zec spokesperson Jasper Mangwana could neither confirm nor deny that the electoral body had not paid some of its staff.
“Can you be a bit patient, I am not in the office right now. I will only be able to give you the correct information tomorrow (today),” Mangwana said.
Election watchdogs, however, said the development would compromise the quality of election outcomes.
Zimbabwe Election Advocacy Trust spokesperson Ignatious Sadziwa told NewsDay that Zec was deliberately not paying its workers after receiving $83 million for the two exercises.
“Zec officials, who were hired to conduct voter inspection and education exercises recently, are yet to receive their two-week allowances. This is against (the) backdrop that the commission received a budget of $83m on the two exercises. Funding of elections is very critical in any democracy. This has a propensity of compromising the quality of election outcomes,” Sadziwa said.
“We spoke to people who were affected and they said they were not told how much they were going to be paid and which rate would be used to pay them. They were just told to sign up the contracts. Zec is using these people for free and this is so wrong.”
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