HARARE, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- The Zimbabwean government has come up with an ingenious way of encouraging people to register to vote in the 2018 elections by dangling a reward of food to the district that registers the highest number of voters under the ongoing Biometric Voter Registration (BVR).
The state run newspaper Herald reported Monday that Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Happyton Bonyongwe told traditional leaders in Bulawayo last week that the district with the highest number of voters in each of the country's 10 provinces would receive 30 tonnes of rice.
While urging the traditional leaders to encourage their subjects to register to vote, Bonyongwe said the government had also seen it fit to introduce a competition on the exercise.
"We then thought of programs to do with voter registration. As a ministry, we want to see people registering to vote. Everyone should go out and register as a voter.
"The district that will register the highest number of voters per province will receive a truckload of rice, which amounts to 30 tonnes per district," he said.
Bonyongwe said voter registration is important as it helps the government to prepare for the elections.
About 1.2 million people have registered to vote under the new BVR since it started in September.
In a bid to include all sectors of society in the exercise, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has deployed mobile registration kits to disadvantaged people, including old people's homes, hospitals and institutions housing people with disabilities.
President Robert Mugabe on Sept. 8 proclaimed four months of voter registration for the forthcoming elections starting on September 14 and running up to Jan. 15 2018.
This will be the first time since independence in 1980 that the voters' roll will be administered outside the Registrar-General's Office following the adoption of a new constitution which transferred the responsibility to ZEC.
Laxton Group of China has delivered all 3,000 kits needed for voter registration.
ZEC has said it is targeting to register about 7 million voters for the 2018 harmonized Presidential, legislative and local government elections, where Mugabe is likely to face a challenge from a coalition of opposition parties led by former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Tsvangirai was prime minister in a coalition government with Mugabe between 2009 and 2013.
Mugabe, 93, has been Zimbabwe's sole leader since the country attained independence from Britain in 1980.
