Stopping of Payment of Poll Staff through Banks

The Malawi Electoral Commission wishes to inform all stakeholders that it will shortly stop the process of electronic bank transfers to paypolling staff for the May 2014 polling exercise, and will adopt a revised approach for the remaining payments.

While 90% of the almost 90,000 staff have been paid, the process of correcting account information errors returned by the banks for the remaining staff is a time consuming process. As such, in the interest of speeding up the final payments for staff whose account information was in error, the MEC is working with UNDP to prepare the logistics for cash payments to be made directly in the Councils.

These staff include Constituency Returning Officers, District Election Coordinators, Presiding Officers, Assistant Presiding Officers, Polling Clerks, Marshalls, Quality Control Managers and Security Personnel.

The Commission will announce through the media and Constituency Returning Offices on the dates and modality for these payments to be made. All poll workers are being assured that the funding is safe and the Commission will ensure that everyone who worked during polling gets their pay. 

The general public is assured that it is in the interest of the Commission to pay the temporary staff as soon as possible for the services they rendered and this matter is being treated as a high priority.

Signed this 2nd day of September, 2014 at Blantyre

Willie Kalonga

Chief Elections Officer