The consignment containing 6000 kits landed at the JKIA at 9.30PM
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 3 – The second batch of the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits arrived in Nairobi on Friday night, a day after the first consignment was delivered.
The consignment containing 6000 kits landed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 9.30PM aboard a Martinair cargo plane, to beat the tight deadlines set out for voter registration that will start on November 12.
“We have received the remainder of the batch this evening and we hope to now proceed and conduct our processes after the kits are cleared,” said IEBC’s Communications Manager Tabitha Mutemi.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) received 8,200 BVR kits on Thursday at the JKIA following months of waiting after the Treasury paid the balance to French supplier Safran Morpho.
IEBC has already recruited polling officials who will now undergo the requisite training before the registration starts.
The commission is scheduled to start training 29,000 registration clerks for three days starting Wednesday next week.
The electoral commission will also release a new set of electoral timelines to accommodate the12 extra days that have been that have been lost with the protracted delivery of kits.
The Treasury released Sh7.2 million on October 24 ahead of an expected loan of a similar amount from Canada to facilitate the release of the kits
Safran Morpho- the French company- chosen to supply the kits had withheld the deliveries over differences on the payment schedules drawn in the contact.
Voter registration, in which IEBC targets to register 18 million voters, is expected to last for a month.
The kits were procured in a government-to-government arrangement, in a move to ensure faster delivery in time for the March 2013 general election after IEBC cancelled the initial tender.
The arrival of the kits comes after the Attorney General assured that he was consulting in order to fast track the gazzetement of election regulations.
Parliament, which resumes later this month, is expected to pass the Campaign Financing Bill to complete the enactment of electoral legislations.
On Friday, Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka directed the department of Registration of Persons to move with speed and ensure Kenyans over the age of 18 are issued with IDs within the shortest time so that they can participate in voter listing exercise.
“It has become clear that thousands of Kenyans are yet to get IDs especially now that the country is preparing for elections,” he said.
“It is because of this reason that I direct registrar of persons to ensure Kenyans are issued with IDs especially those who had applied so that they are not locked out of important activities like employment and elections,” added Musyoka while he toured his Mwingi North Constituency.
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