Ministry says BVR kits found with NYS personnel used for empowerment programs and not voter registration

dennis kibet

February 14, 2017 3:39 PM

Runda residents on Monday detained NYS servicemen who were found with Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits which were allegedly being used to register youths at PCEA Beula Church.

The Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs has defended the National Youth Service (NYS) against parallel voter registration claims.

However, Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki said the agency has been registering Youth Empowerment Program (YEP) beneficiaries to streamline identification, payment and management of cohorts.

She denied the claims that the BVR kits had anything to do with the ongoing Mass Voter Registration exercise.

According to local daily reports, the CS said the registration exercise was conducted in Westlands as it is among key YEP areas targeted for a launch.

"The system used for biometric registration of NYS cohorts is completely different from the one used by IEBC. This includes the biometric scanner itself. Whereas the IEBC use a four finger scanner, the NYS is using a single digit scanner," she said on Tuesday.

Similar incident

The CS said that the biometric registration had been in use for YEP at NYS since phase two of the programme early in 2016.

She invited interested parties to verify the nature of data captured by the NYS biometric equipment at the Gigiri police station.

This comes only a day after three suspects were arrested for being in possession of voter transfer forms in Eastleigh, Nairobi.

Nairobi County commander Japheth Koome said the police recovered voter registration materials stolen from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

Mr Koome said that the suspects were found with 33 voter registration forms.

dennis kibet