Aspirants mobilise street families to register in fresh voter drive

Kennedy Omondi shows his ID card during the ongoing voter registration at Jomo Kenyatta Sports Ground in Kisumu. [PHOTO: DENISH OCHIENG]

Street families will be among those targeted in the ongoing voter registration exercise that kicked off yesterday.

At Kisumu Central, Manyatta, Nyalenda and Obunga, political aspirants were busy mobilising street urchins of voting age to apply for national identity cards and voters’ cards.

ID card mobile registration bureaus have been moved to voter registration centres, where the officers were busy yesterday registering young persons who had attained the age of 18.

A registration official disclosed that there were over 6,000 uncollected IDs, some of which were displayed at the voter registration centres.

Some volunteer members of the public, checked the cards and the areas where those who had not collected them came from before setting out in search of the owners using public address systems.

The public search for owners of uncollected IDs caught some by surprise.

James Ochola, Irene Onyango and John Omolo were waiting to board matatus to town when they heard their names being called out over a public address system.

“Anybody who knows James Ochola, John Omolo, please tell them to go and collect their ID cards and go and register for elections today,@ announced one volunteer, Boniface Otieno.

LONG QUEUES

In Central, a parliamentary aspirant, Richard Ogendo, took it upon himself to move round in his newly acquired trailer to mobilise street families.

Ogendo also donated more than 100 motor bikes with uniformed riders to assist ferry unregistered voters from the urban estates.

“We have mobilised enough resources to assist eligible voters come out and vote,” he told the Standard.

The trailer that he says cost him Sh22 million was later stationed at Kisumu Sports Ground where local leaders addressed residents on the importance of registering.

Long queues were witnessed in several polling stations in the area, with officials referring voters seeking to transfer from one station to another to Huduma centres.