ZCID to train 27, 000 political party poll agents

ZCID Chairperson Captain Walusiku Liambela

The Zambia Centre for Inter – Party Dialogue (ZCID) in partnership with the Netherlands for Multi party Democracy (NIMD) has targeted to train a total of 27, 000 political party poll agents to monitor next week’s general elections.

Under the Political Parties Capacity Building for poll watching, the project has so far trained a total of 148 provincial and national level party leaders drawn from the five political parties to monitor the polls.

The project targets to train members from Movement for Multi Party Democracy (MMD), Patriotic Front (PF), United Party for National Development (UPND), Alliance for Democracy and Development (ADD) and Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) in order for them to have an in-depth understanding and technical knowhow regarding what it takes for a party to execute a professional and effective poll watching.

Speaking during a press briefing in Lusaka this morning, ZCID Chairperson Captain Walusiku Liambela says the project has reached the stage of facilitating processes of ensuring that all the targeted political parties are fully capacitated to undertake effective monitoring on poll day.

Captain Liambela says a strong effort has been directed to ensuring that political parties have sufficient number of adequately trained poll agents, knowledge and resources required to undertake this important task.

She says the direct engagement of ZCID/NIMD with political parties at this level is one of most appropriate mechanisms for ensuring that political parties manage to place on the day of election their desired number of well trained and adequately equipped poll agents.

Captain Liambela, who is also upnd deputy secretary general, says the project is supporting the implementation of a total of hundred district based poll agents saying the target is to ensure that at least 4, 000 potential party agents access the training opportunity countrywide.