Kisumu Commercial Sex Workers Stops Sleeping With Men Without Voters Card And Offer Free Services To The Registered Every Wednesday

The push to have maximum voters registration is in full gears across the country with politicians burning the night oil and traversing the country with the key priority of mobilizing their supporters to register ahead of August polls.

IEBC has a target of registering 6M voters in the final drive. Politicians are using numerous alternatives some even bizarre in consolidating and mobilizing voter registration, especially in their home turf. In Muranga, Kirinyaga bars holding ID cards left as leverage die unpaid alcohol debts has been ordered to release them while owners warned against serving drinks to anyone without voters cards. Women are also using sex boycott to coerce their husbands into registration.

Methods applied range with counties with governors headlining the push. In Kisumu like all counties, the governor, Ranguma is exploiting all loopholes together with allied politicians in ensuring nothing short of maximum voters registration.

Kisumu’s votes rich estates Nyalenda, Nyamasaria, Railway, Kondele, Manyatta, and Obunga have been marked and registration drive on a devil’s speed.

Governor Jack Ranguma has made a promise to reward wards that will meet the set targets with Sh1 million. Kisumu County aims to register 183,000 new voters in the ongoing exercise. Kisumu closed the latest IEBC tally of top 10 counties with 21,254 new registrations. Ranguma is also using the boda-boda riders in pushing the agenda. Word is no passenger is allowed to board any matatu and boda-boda without voters card. Other politicians are also offering free tokens to those who register as a luring tactic.

President Uhuru inspects one of the IEBC registration desks in Kitui as he embarks on countrywide tour for mobilization

Kenya Insights has learned that the Kisumu Commercial Sex Workers union have also thrown in their support in the most conventional way to push the men in the city to register. Jane Atieno, the 36-year-old veteran in the industry and union’s spokesperson based in ‘Stage’ lane is echoing a unanimous decision by members to use their tools of the trade in pushing voters registration. The exotic workers have decided not to offer their services to those without the card as a way to coerce them into registration. “We’re also tired of omawa omawa (we’ve been rigged) after every election, everyone and their grandmother must have electors card and vote. We will not sleep with any man without a voters card, and that’s the stand we’ve taken.” Said Atieno.

They don’t stop at giving ultimatums but goes further to make it enticing by offering free services to all those with voters card, “we will offer free services every Wednesday until IEBC winds up registration. Free for those who’ve registered as voters.” Reads one of the directives from Jane in their union’s chat group seen by Kenya Insights. It’s however with a time that will tell if the resolution will take charge and eventually meet the intended results of maximum voters registration. Voter apathy is a serious issue in Kisumu that has alarmed local leaders. With many intrigues surrounding IEBC registration, one can only pray for things to get better.

Talking of IEBC and discrepancies, A dangerous loophole has been unearthed: Out of the 128,926 records of shared IDs, 107,777 show the same ID number but different names. A further analysis showed 53,671 of the IDs were shared more than once. The remaining 21,149 are for persons who attempted to register more than once at different polling stations.

The analysis further indicates the shared ID numbers could be the result of data entry errors at the time of registration, possible use of one ID to register more than once, attempted registration of more than one person using same ID or shared national ID numbers.