IEBC chair Wafula Chebukati while addressing the press during a workshop meeting for the Kenya Media Working Group in Mombasa confirmed that the general elections shall be conducted on the ninth of August come next year as stipulated in the Kenyan Constitution of 2010.
According to the Constitution, the general elections must be held on the second Tuesday of the month of August after every five years from the previous election.
In his address/statement, the IEBC chair affirmed that the commission is determined to ensure that the elections shall be credible, free, fair, and transparent come 2022 polls. In line with that, some accredited media groups will be allowed to access polling stations and tallying centers to broadcast the voting exercise and tallying of results for transparency purposes.
The election legislation States that the elections should be conducted, votes counted and final results announced at the various polling stations.
The Chief Commissioner also urged the media personnel to be observant on very key processes like voter registration, campaigns among others because media plays a crucial role in the dissemination of information and in influencing the opinion of the public.
The chair also tabled the approximated cost for conducting the general elections to be at 40.9 billion shillings. In his statement, Chebukati revealed that of the 40.9 billion shillings the election process will take about 40.3 billion shillings whereas the additional 500 plus million shall be used to ensure that covid-19 protocols are adhered to. This money shall be used to purchase items like thermo-guns for checking the temperatures of the voters and other things like sanitizers.
It was further revealed that the electoral body was allocated 26.3 billion shillings by the National Treasury in the 2021/2022 budget. This means that the commissioners will require an additional amount of approximately 14.6 billion shillings as per the approximated budget in order to be able to conduct the general elections effectively come next year.
