THE Electoral Commission in KwaZulu-Natal says it is all systems go for Monday's local government elections at its 4940 voting stations across the province.
This was revealed on Friday by KZN acting provincial electoral officer Ntombifuthi Masinga during the official launch of the Results Operations Centre at the Department of Public Works, Archie Gumede Conference Centre, in Mayville, Durban.
Masinga detailed the province's state of readiness to hold the much anticipated local government elections, saying that their planning began at the end of the 2019 national and provincial elections.
He said that they were ready to welcome the four million registered voters at polling stations across the province.
The centre is set to be the provincial nerve centre for the duration of the local government elections, the commission said on Friday.
Malinga said that most of the voting stations were permanent voting stations, while they had also erected 151 voting stations across the province.
She said that about 209 voting stations do not have electricity, 143 do not have toilets, 147 do not have running water and nine do not have any cellphone network connectivity.
“Others may have connectivity but it's weak, but we have nine that have absolutely no connectivity at all.”
She said that they were able to negotiate with Eskom to reconnect voting stations at owing municipalities that would have been disconnected due to non-payment at least tomorrow, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
“We are then able to say to them please connect us for the purposes of the elections then you can disconnect afterwards if you have to if they haven't resolved the payment issue with the entity that we are using as a voting station.”
She added that they had recruited and trained all of their staff in the province and were now busy with mop up sessions for people that may not have been able to attend on the days that they were supposed to attend.
“For the first time we experimented with a hybrid recruitment system where we opened up our digital platforms for people to apply by accessing our website and applying to work in the elections, but we were still taking walk inside as well people who do not have internet access who still needed to physically go to the IEC offices and apply to work in the elections.
“We are still retaining our pass mark of 80 and if you don't get the 80% pass we either retrain you, if we realise that you're not trainable we then replace you.
“There are a few cases where we've had to swap the Presiding Officer and the Deputy Presiding Officer because the Presiding Officer was struggling to get the 80% pass mark and we had to swap them around the Deputy Presiding Officer takes over as the Presiding Officer in that voting station.”
Political Bureau