By Chengeto Chidi
Government is working on a road rehabilitation blitz for the public to access polling stations without any hindrances in the August harmonised elections.
Speaking at the post Cabinet press briefing held on Thursday in Harare Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Monica Mutsvangwa said that the Ministry of Local Government is working on the Blitz Maintenance of Access Roads to Polling Stations.
She said that the maintenance is aimed at allowing every registered voter to participate in the coming elections and serves to fulfil the right for everyone to vote
“The nation is advised that the Government launched a blitz maintenance of access roads to polling stations throughout the country in order to allow every eligible voter to access the nearest polling station and exercise their right as enshrined in the Constitution,” she said.
The Minister also shared that the process has already been done in nearly all provinces especially in the rural areas
“A total of 4 000 kilometres out of a targeted 6 145 kilometres have been attended to through grading, gravelling and pothole patching in all the eight rural provinces, while 290 kilometres out of a target of 1 086 kilometres were verge-cleared,” she shared.
Government is working on attaining all the targets that are inclusive of water bodies infrastructure and plans are are underway to continue the blitz maintenance before the election date
“A total of 18 kilometres out of a targeted 216 kilometres of drainage structures on bridges, pipe drifts and culverts were attended to and the works are still on-going,”Mutsvangwa said.
The country is working up its preparedness for the harmonised elections and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has already shared with the public that there are at least 12 000 polling stations in the whole country and these are efforts to ensure that every eligible voter is granted the opportunity to exercise their right to vote.
The move was welcomed by various members of the public who commended the effort to make the voting process easier for them
“I appreciate the effort to make it easy for us as citizens to exercise our right to vote by maintaining the roads bit I just hope it it actually happening on the ground,” said Harare resident Tendai Tagwirei in an interview.