Kisii Governor James Ongwae has urged residents not to wait until the last minute to start rushing to voter registration centres.
“I am urging our people to register as voters now. They should never complain if they fail to participate in the polls because they failed to register as voters,” he told the Star on the phone.
The mass voter registration started on October 4 and will run through to November 2.
Ongwae said the target of registering 200,000 people in the region will only be achieved if youths turn up in large numbers.
“There is a good number of our youths who never participated in the 2017 general election because they were not registered. The 200,000 targets will only be achieved if the youth seize this opportunity and register as voters,” he said.
Ongwae urged those who had applied for IDs to visit the Office of the Registrar of Persons and collect the documents.
County commissioner Allan Machari has said there are 3,500 IDs gathering dust in subcounty offices.
He wondered why people spend time applying for the documents only to fail to collect them when they are fully processed.
“I can really understand why our people have the tendency of failing to pick valuable documents like IDs even when they have been fully processed. I am urging those who have not picked the same to visit subcounty offices to collect them,” Machari said.
Ongwae also urged the youth to shun leaders who use them to disrupt political gatherings of their opponents.
He said the era of violence is long gone and Kenyans are clever, hence they know whom they want to elect as their next president.
“The country has come a long way in terms of democracy, so it will be prudent for leaders to stop misusing the youth to gain political mileage,” Ongwae further said.
Edited by A.N
