Ruto reacts to the ongoing voter registration

Deputy President William Ruto has asked Parliament to allocate enough resources to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to adequately facilitate the ongoing voter registration exercise.

This comes just a day since the IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati disclosed to the public how the commission had failed to meet its voter registration target a week into the exercise.

While addressing a section of Mt Kenya and Ukambani aspirants in his Karen office, the DP said the majority of those targeted in the voter registration are young people who will play a key role in next year’s polls.

"Parliament should allocate additional resources to IEBC to enable it to discharge its mandate and make sure no voter is denied the opportunity to vote next year," Ruto said.

His sentiments coming days after the electoral commission revealed that it has only registered about 202,518 new voters out of the weekly target of 1,500,000 since the exercise began on October 4.

This represents about 13.5 per cent of the total target, which according to the IEBC, were occasioned by a list of challenges relative to every region.

“The Commission targets to register 6 million new eligible Kenyans, on the basis of information from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics 2019 Kenya Population and Housing Census report. The target was disaggregated to each County, Constituency and County Assembly Ward to enable monitoring of progress,” his statement read in part.

The 30-day exercise is scheduled to run through the month of October.