By Lewis Njeri
(gichunjilewis2@gmail.com)
IEBC conducted a voter registration activity at the PAC in the main campus,Athi River, from October 19th to 25th.
The IEBC clerks – Caroline Mbinye and Milcah Nduku, were surprised to register 147 students out of a targeted 1000. This represented a total of 15% of the expected numbers which was a big disapointment to them. In addition, most of those who registered were from other counties.
According to the two clerks the reason for the low turnout includes students (especially first years) not having ID cards but only waiting cards, others willingly refusing to conduct the process while others not being aware of it.”Most ID’s haven’t been released hence couldn’t be registered for lack of a serial number,” says Ms Mbinye
Most of the freshmen are still young hence there is no way they could get registered without an identification card. Surprisingly, some of them were not interested in the process with some of them claiming to be already registered as voters. Others who live off-campus were not aware of the ongoing process.
As of October 27th, the total number of voters that had been registered countrywide was 760,000 out of a target of 4.5 million. This represents 17% of the total targeted by IEBC.
The next destination of the two is Kinanie where they will continue with registering voters from Mavoko constituency.