UPDATING the permanent voter register in Ruvuma, Njombe, Songwe and Rukwa regions will take place across seven days, from January 12 to 18.

Justice Jacobs Mwambegele, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), was quoted in an INEC statement setting out the schedule for the register update.

The schedule was presented at meetings with election stakeholders for the regions held yesterday, where commission members said it was the ninth round of electoral register updates. 

The commission has already completed updates in 19 regions, completing eight rounds out of the 13 planned for the nationwide exercise.

INEC officials were in Songwe, while their colleagues held meetings in Njombe, Rukwa and Ruvuma regions to finalise preparations for updating the register in those regions.

Filing in voter information will take place in all districts, with registration centres opening eight in the morning and closing at six in the evening each day, the statement indicated.

Kigoma, Tabora, Katavi, Geita, Kagera, Mwanza, Shinyanga, Mara, Simiyu, Manyara, Dodoma and Singida regions have completed the update exercises, it said.

The process has also been completed in all Zanzibar regions as well as Arusha and Kilimanjaro, while Mbeya and Iringa regions are slated to finish update exercises early this month, it elaborated.

Kailima Ramadhani, the director of elections, said in remarks attributed to him in the meetings that a total of 475,743 new voters are expected to be registered.

Upon completion of update exercises, regions now completing the exercise are expected to have 3,091,485 registered voters, from 2,615,742 registered for polls 2020.

“This number may increase, as there may be Tanzanians who were eligible to register as voters during the 2019/20 update but were unable to do so for various reasons,” the presentation indicated.

There will be 3,785 registration centres, an increase of 233 centres from the 3,552 centres that were in place in 2020, it added.