HARARE, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is taking the Biometric Voter Registration to various institutions of disadvantaged people as it seeks to include all sectors of society in the process, chief elections officer Constance Chigwamba said Wednesday.
Chigwamba said in an election notice that mobile voter registration kits would be deployed from time to time across the country.
"These mobile voter registration kits shall be deployed to various points such as Parliament Building, old people's homes, hospitals and institutions housing people with disabilities," she said.
Meanwhile, state media reported that the voter registration blitz by ZEC started on a poor note on Tuesday with few people coming forward to register.
Rains also affected registration in some parts of the country.
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.
Voter registration began in earnest on Sept. 18 amid complaints that the process was very slow and that the registration centers were very few.
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 the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (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.
However, his health has been a worry to his supporters after he was recently airlifted to South Africa and still recuperating there.
He announced in 2016 that he had been diagnosed with cancer of the colon.
Mugabe, 93, has been Zimbabwe's sole leader since the country attained independence from Britain in 1980.
