Since beginning with its communication drive for the second round of registration (beginning of October) alone, the electoral body says it has received 108 799 checks via our SMS and Absa ATM facilities with people confirming their registration status.
By yesterday morning, the IEC's call centre had recorded some 137 000 calls in total since 3 September, and about 9 000 calls were received in the first few hours.
“Our website has recorded 587 647 hits since the beginning of October,” the electoral body said.
Chief Electoral Officer Pansy Tlakula attributed this to their communication campaign.
During October, at least 108 799 potential voters confirmed their registration status through SMS and ABSA Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) facilities.
By early yesterday, the IEC's call centre had recorded about 137 000 calls since September 3.
On certification for the 1999 elections the voters' roll was at 18 172, 751 while in 2000 it was 18 476 516 and for the 2004 elections it stood at 20 674 926.
Since February 2004, the IEC has netted 221 914 new registrations from targeted registration and registration at municipal offices.
In addition, 222 678 voters turned 18 and their names were added to the voters' roll.
Meanwhile, the final registration lap “ran smoothly” yesterday despite poor weather conditions in some parts of the country.
“We've received reports that in various parts of the country some of our temporary voting stations like tents were blown away by wind. However, we were able to re-erect most of them by 10h00 yesterday,” said chairperson Brigalia Bam on the weekend.
Incidents of power failure, she said, had been attended to by power utility, Eskom.
“There were isolated incidents where we had difficulties in accessing the voting stations because of rain, but assistance was received from the police and the situation remained under control,” she said.
The situation at Khutsong on the West Rand - where residents burned municipal offices recently in protest of lack of service delivery - was under control.
The area's Inter-Sectoral Committee Forum and the Municipal Party Liaison Committee had since been encouraged to lure citizens to register for the election.
“Police have been deployed there at Khutsong but no incidents have been reported,” said Bam.
She said she visited at least four registration centres in Diepsloot yesterday where political party agents were also encouraging people to register.
“The most encouraging thing is that at one of the stations, about 125 people had already registered by 10h15,” she noted. -BuaNews
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