DAR ES SALAAM, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said on Thursday the government was working on plans aimed at enabling Tanzanians living abroad to participate in the 2020 general elections.
Majaliwa told parliament in the capital Dodoma that the government was in the process of establishing the exact number of Tanzanians living abroad who were eligible to vote for the October presidential and parliamentary elections.
"The process will also seek to establish if Tanzanians living abroad were holding the country's citizenship and what they were doing there," he told the House.
Majaliwa made the statement when he was answering a special-seat member of parliament Asha Abdullah Juma who wanted to know what the government was doing to allow Tanzanians living abroad to vote in the forthcoming polls.
She said the government was likely to tarnish its good image if it failed to accommodate Tanzanians living abroad to participate in the elections.
Majaliwa said the government was doing all it could to find the best way of allowing Tanzanians living abroad to participate in the elections but it required a long process.
In the 2015 general elections about 1.5 million Tanzanians living and working overseas did not participate in the general elections after the government failed to register them.
