By Ernest Mfunya

Mangochi, January 23, Mana: Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has described the first phase of the supplementary voter registration exercise that commenced on Tuesday, January 21 to Wednesday, January 22, 2025, as successful.

MEC was conducting a two-day supplementary voter registration exercise for eligible Malawians who could not register during the initial phases.

The first phase of the exercise was conducted in Mzimba, Lilongwe City, Lilongwe District, Mangochi Municipal, Mangochi District, Mwanza, Chikwawa and Nsanje.  

Speaking in an interview during the closure of the exercise at St. Augustine 3 Primary School in Mangochi on Wednesday, Director of Media and Public Relations for the Commission, Sangwani Mwafulirwa said that apart from deploying all necessary resources to designated centres, the Commission also reminded the eligible citizens through different means of communication, to exercise their right of registering.

"As a Commission, we managed to remind the eligible voters in respective districts to come out, through different communication channels such as phone short messages, and all the centres remained operational throughout the period hence the satisfaction comes in that perspective.

‘‘Our target for this supplementary exercise is to register about 271,000 people nationwide, hence we do not expect to have long queues of people similar to the initial voter registration exercise simply because we are targeting a small number of people who registered their national IDs from October 2024 to January 4, 2025," said Mwafulirwa.

He therefore appealed to all political parties in the country to encourage their supporters to register so that they can vote come September 16 this year.

A monitor for the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), Brunnot Patrick Eliya urged the Electoral Commission to continue intensifying community sensitization in the remaining phases to ensure the targeted number of registrations is achieved.

The second phase of the supplementary voter registration exercise is scheduled from January 27 to 28 and will cover districts such as Blantyre, Zomba, Kasungu, Nkhatabay, Rumphi, Likoma, Dowa, Mchinji, Ntcheu, Thyolo as well as Blantyre City, Zomba City, Kasungu and Luncheza Manucipality.