Suspicion mounts as Chipata MMD ferries residents for NRCs

Suspicion mounts as Chipata MMD ferries residents for NRCs
By Christopher Miti in Chipata
Tue 12 Oct. 2010, 14:10 CAT

THE Eastern Province National Registration office has failed to intervene in a matter where the MMD are ferrying people to get National Registration Cards (NRCs) at Chipata office. The MMD had continued ferrying people from the outskirts of Chipata to get NRC’s using Chipata Central member of parliament Lameck Mangani’s truck.

Asked whether it was in order for political parties to ferry people to registration centres, provincial registrar only identified as Ms. Chilembo refused to comment on the matter and referred all queries to the head office in Lusaka.

“Ba Post, so you want to put this in the paper? asked Chilembo. Efforts to get a comment from the national registration office in Lusaka failed as the phone went unanswered.

And provincial PF publicity secretary Mung’omba Ngoma said it was unfortunate that MMD had continued hoodwinking people in Chipata. Ngoma appealed to all those willing to contest in the province to start ferrying people too.

“If what the MMD are doing was being done by us in the opposition, you would have seen their (government) reaction but now they have deliberately turned a blind eye on this. The MMD has continued to ferry their cadres from their perceived strongholds to come here in town and get NRC’s and they are using Honourable Mangani’s vehicle,” he said.

Ngoma said most people who were being ferried by the MMD could be Malawians because they were from the border areas.

“Their desperation will even lead to Malawians getting registered in Zambia. You know, they ferry people who are more than 30 years. Now the question is, are they real Zambians? Why are they getting NRCs now?” asked Ngoma.

But Kanjala MMD ward councillor Jealous Phiri said the MMD would continue ferrying people to get NRCs.

“Have you seen those people? We are ferrying people to get NRC’s so the opposition should not cry foul when we win,” Phiri said while pointing at Mangani’s blue truck that had ferried Kagunda residents to get NRC’s.

He said the MMD had consulted widely before embarking on the exercise.

Phiri said a lot of people were not aware about the extension of the voter registration exercise.

“A lot of people are not aware about the extension of the voter
registration exercise. There are some people who do not listen to
radio they don’t watch TVs or read newspapers, so we want these people to get NRCs and later register as voters,” Phiri said.

Phiri said there were a lot of potential voters in his ward that do not have NRCs.

In 2005, then Kasenengwa UNIP member of parliament Timothy Nyirenda was stopped by then provincial registrar Pearson Malisawa from ferrying the people to the National Registration office to get NRCs.