By Tatenda Chitagu

An online advert purporting to be from the electoral management body, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) calling for applications for 3 500 posts of presiding, collation, security and electoral officers is fake, a fact check by ZimTracker has revealed.

The advert has been making rounds on several groups on social messaging application, WhatsApp, yesterday, and has gone viral.

Titled, ‘Zimbabwe Electoral Commission 2023 Ad Hoc Staff recruitment’, it reads, “The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is recruiting ad hoc staffs (sic) for the coming general election (sic). Interested applications should click the link below to apply now. Apply Here https://zec.org.programagency.info/”

Upon clicking the link, a site, https://zec.org.programagency.info/#1685622889177 opens.

It says it is the ‘Zimbabwe Electoral Commission 2023/2024 ad hoc staff recruitment portal’ and wants ‘1000 collation officers, 1000 preciding officers (sic), 1000 security officers, and 500 electoral officers’ on its masthead.

The offer is too good to be true: successful applicants will get ‘a monthly allowance, and free accomodation (sic)-and no application fee is required.’

A ZEC logo is below right where it asks for applicant details like full name, gender, e-mail address, phone number and says click to continue.

A basic fact check reveals this is a scam.

The original ZEC website is www.zec.org.zw. The logo is at the top. The fake one’s web address is www.zec.org.

The spelling mistakes and grammatical errors also sell out that it is a scam.

Again, ZEC will not recruit for 2023 and 2024, as the clone ZEC website says, since elections are set for 23 August, and if need be, a re-run will be held on 02 October 2023. And the recruitment by ZEC for elections staff is done through the Public Service and there are no monthly allowances or free accommodation given.

The fake ZEC website was hosted in 2022, something that also raises eyebrows.

ZEC Chief elections officer Utloile Silaigwana said the message is fake.

“I have not seen the advert, but what I can tell you is that we do not recruit that way. The law says we recruit through the public service. So if the advert is like that then its fake,” he said in a telephone interview.

On its official Twitter handle @ZECzim, the electoral management body dismissed the advert as fake.