Over 80 Zambezi youth prank called to gear up for polling training

The Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) has been forced to turn away more than 80 job-seeking Zambezi youth who came for training after reportedly receiving prank calls.

The ECN commenced with nationwide training of polling officials over the weekend, in preparation of next week’s presidential and National Assembly elections.

Speaking to The Namibian on Tuesday, regional electoral officer Lesley Simwanza said since the training started, numerous young people not part of the 1 003 polling officials registered in the region have arrived for training.

Upon investigating, they discovered the youth were not called by someone from the ECN’s human resource office, said Simwanza.

“We informed our human resource office, which sent us the official polling list again, and we went through it. However, none of these youth that were called by supposed ECN officials [were] on the list.

“We gave them our official numbers and told them if they do not get a call from any of those numbers, they should ignore [calls].”
Simwanza warned young people to be vigilant of scammers and said at least they were not asked for money.

Meanwhile, Simwanza said as of Monday, the ECN had only issued three duplicate voter’s cards in the Katima Mulilo Urban constituency, while other constituencies had not issued any duplicates.

According to Simwanza, the ECN received an election consignment over the weekend, and everything is sufficient.

“We will start dispatching the consignment to the 227 polling stations from 25 November, with police escorts,” he said.

Caption
Regional electoral officer Lesley Simwanza
Photo: Contributed