Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) will be providing Vaseline at biometric voter registration centres to help those whose fingers have areas on their thumbs where prints were missing or skin appeared mottled due to rough skin.
This comes as the number of those who cannot have biometric data captured because of unreadable fingerprints is increasing.
“To say why are machines not reading other finger prints, yes we know that can happen, even at the police station, taking finger prints can be a problem…and now that we know it can happen, tichapota tichiisa (we shall apply) Vaseline,” Zec commissioner Joyce Kazembe told reporters at an elections media workshop.
Adults with excessively dry hands are four times more likely than healthy counterparts to fail computerised fingerprint verification tests.
According to reports received from various voter registration centres, it took an average of 20 minutes per person. This is contrary to the four minutes per registrant that was assured by the Zec during various stakeholder engagements.
