8m voters to be listed ahead of 2012 election

File | Naton Interim Independent Electoral Commission CEO James Oswago 

By  NJERI RUGENE nrugene@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Tuesday, March 15 2011 at 22:00

In Summary

• IIEC says it will also review the number of polling stations in line with new figures

An additional eight million voters will be registered ahead of the next General Election.

Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) chief executive officer James Oswago told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that the number of voters is expected to rise to 21 million by 2012.

The commission, he added, has so far registered 12.5 million Kenyans as voters.

“According to the 2009 population census, the number of people aged 18 and above is 30 million and we expect to register about eight to ten million by next election,” Mr Oswago said.

The commission will require additional funds for the registration in addition to hiring more Kenyans to beef up its “skeleton staff” and asked Parliament to allocate it more funds.

Mr Oswago told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which was chaired by Mwala MP Daniel Muoki, that the increase in the number of voters will mean a review of polling stations/centres and “this requires additional funds.”

“Yes we are going to totally review polling centres in the country to cater for the increased number of voters. We envisage polling streams within polling stations to have a maximum of 300-400 voters. This will see us deliver results of the next General Election under just five hours,” he said in response to questions asked by Bura MP Nuh Nassir.

Mr Oswago said IIEC was crossing its fingers in the hope that a potential explosion of legal tussles will not erupt between it and contractors whose contracts were terminated with the disbandment of the defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya.

In addition, he said the commission has no records of its assets across the country “since ECK did not hand over to IIEC.”