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Audit finds no foreigners in Zambia's voter register

Xinhua, July 13, 2016 Adjust font size:

An audit of Zambia's voter register has revealed that there are no foreigners who were registered to vote in the country's general elections scheduled for next month, a senior official from the electoral body said on Tuesday.

In May, reports in some local media said the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) had registered thousands of foreigners mostly from Malawi ad Mozambique to take part in the August 11 polls to help the governing party emerge victorious.

This prompted stakeholders to demand for an audit of the voters' register, a move that forced the electoral body to appoint independent auditors with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) last month.

Justice Esau Chulu, the chairperson of the electoral body said the audit has established that no foreigners were registered to take part in the elections.

He told a stakeholders' meeting in Lusaka, the country's capital that the audit has established that there was no evidence that foreigners were added to the 2016 voters' register.

He however said a number of anomalies have been identified in the register such as people having the same national identification numbers and some ineligible people registering as voters.

The electoral chief said 142, 383 people were found to be ineligible to vote and have since been removed from the register.

According to him, the audit of the voters' register was done in a transparent manner by foreign independent auditors between June 5 and July 5. Endit