HARARE - Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC has said its youths and supporters in Masvingo are being frustrated while registering as voters at the local Registrar General’s office (RG’s office).

At the same time, the party said, Zanu PF supporters are being bussed in from rural areas to register.

Disgruntled MDC supporters this week said suspected party supporters were being frustrated by deliberate delays and flimsy excuses and some were being turned away.

The party alleged that officials at the local RG’s Office “literally fell over each other when Zanu PF supporters come for registration.”

The party did not state how the officials at the RG’s Office were distinguishing the supporters.

But according to the MDC ward 7 chairperson, Tafara Masimba, scores of party youths and supporters from his ward were being denied access to register as voters ahead of the next elections to be held this year.

Registrar of Voters Tobaiwa Mudede has persistently declined to entertain questions from the Daily News about voter registration, and recently kicked out our reporter from one of his meetings in Harare saying the paper was not welcome to cover him.

Masimba said officials at the local RG’s Office were playing endless mind games.

“People are frustrated because workers at the local Registrar General’s Office are operating at a snail’s pace when our supporters approach them for voter registration,” he said.

“We believe they want to make sure that only a handful of our supporters register to vote compared to Zanu PF’s number of potential voters.

“However, we are banking on the mobile voter registration exercise to start soon so that our youths can be able to register without any hassles,” said Masimba.

Masvingo Urban legislator, Tongai Matutu assured party supporters the mobile voter registration exercise would commence soon.

“We are optimistic the mobile voter registration exercise will start very soon,” he said.

“We have spoken to the staff at the local Registrar General’s Office and we hope the whole process will be carried out smoothly.

We heard that some overzealous officials are turning away our members but we hope sanity will prevail,” said Matutu. - Staff Writer