In Bulawayo, at Tredgold building in Bulawayo central, 442 people were registered and at Bulawayo Center 621 people were registered on the last day. It is therefore prudent that ZEC considers extending the number of days that the sub-district registration centers will be open to facilitate registration of persons who still want to register to vote in the general elections. Conduct of ZEC Officials ZESN commends the ZEC officials for their professional conduct during the BVR blitz and mop up. However there was clearly a marked difference in the comprehension of election issues and attitude of the ZEC employees and those who were seconded to ZEC from Government. It is therefore imperative that ZEC training equips registration/voters’ roll inspection officials on how to facilitate the work of observers and other electoral stakeholders that interact with them. Staff seconded to ZEC from Government Ministries, Statutory Institutions and Local Government appeared to be the most uncooperative when interacting with observers citing Official Secrecy Act as the reason for their inability to respond to inquiries that observers made concerning the registration process thus made the work of observers cumbersome. The Registration center at Remembrance drive is an example of such centers where for the past 12 days the ZESN observer were not been given any statistics relating to the total number of persons that registered on one of the two registration kits that have been deployed at the center. Power Challenges ZESN received some reports of registration being halted at centers where the BVR kits ran out of power. Such reports where not prevalent during the first two weeks of the BVR mop up exercise because of the dry weather spell that prevailed countrywide. However, this week the country received some rainfall and some of the BVR kits being used at registration centers located in the places with cloud cover experienced power challenges as the kits where failing to power up . Such reports were received from Chongogwe Secondary School, in ward 16 of Chivi district. This registration center, on 4 February 2018, had only one person registered and three were turned away because they did not bring the required national identification documents. The BVR kit was sent to charge between 10.00hours and 14.30 hours because the battery was failing to attain sufficient charge owing to the cloud cover. Power challenges, especially in the rural areas also exacerbate the network challenges that were faced in some of the hard to reach areas. These negatively affected the speed at which registration statistics could be relayed to the ZEC headquarters. At the time that ZEC released its 7 February 2018 BVR update 95 of the 469 registration centers had not yet submitted their statistics owing to network and communication challenges. Voters’ Roll Inspection Beyond the static and mobile centers that ZEC will open for the purposes of voters’ roll inspection, there is need for the Commission to consider other inexpensive but effective ways of facilitating the inspection of the voters’ roll. Android applications and a secure portal on the Commission’s website may help increase access to this process by those who 4|Page