Company Announcement – A story of guts, determination, organisational flair, hard work and sheer refusal to be beaten ensured that South African printing and logistical giant, Uniprint was a key factor in ensuring that the recent Tanzanian elections were declared “free and fair". The R100-million tender for this massive operation was awarded to this Durban based company after a lengthy process that involved bids from printers worldwide.
The tender involved printing the election stationery for three simultaneous elections and included:
- Presidential elections, which required a single ballot paper
- Parliamentary elections which involved 264 different ballot papers
- Local ward elections which required 3876 different ballot papers
- All results sheets – 9 different kinds of multi-part booklets
- Sample ballot papers for staff training and for candidates campaigning.
- Tactile ballot folders for visually impaired voters, designed for each type of ballot paper
Total number of ballot papers required was approximately 84-million and these could only be printed once the candidates were finalised,
Time given to complete the job by the Tanzanian government, was a mere six weeks, which is tight by any standards, but harsh reality squeezed the job down to four weeks, as there were delays in receiving the candidate data and photographs from the point of origin. There were multiple trips to Tanzania by Uniprint staff to ensure that all of the data arrived timeously.
Pre Press
Each ballot paper proof had to be created by Uniprint using data supplied (photographs, party logos and candidate names). Deep etching of each photograph and the ballot book layout in Swahili, was undertaken locally and the complexity increased with each election. The Presidential election was simple, requiring one ballot paper. However, the Parliamentary election required 264 types of ballot book and the local elections 3 876.
Just to put the task into perspective the local elections alone required the preparation of 18 000 photographs for candidates contesting the 3 876 seats. Students from a local DTP School were rapidly grafted into Uniprint to assist with the process.
During the project there were also plenty of last minute changes and curve ball situations as the candidate lists were still being finalised in this hectic period. Visiting Tanzanian officials in various teams did proof sign-off.
Printing
The Presidential, Parliamentary ballot and local ballot papers were printed lithographically on four continuous web presses. The entire project consumed in excess of 700 t of security grade paper. Initially, the first 200 t of paper had static problems and had to be run at lower speeds with higher waste to accommodate the slack edges.
Logistics
To add to the complexity Tanzania is divided into six election zones, which are served by 70 000 polling stations. Therefore, ballot papers for each region had to be packaged and kitted correctly according to zone and candidates standing. Kitting means that the appropriate ballot papers are boxed, labelled and supplied correctly for each polling station in each zone for each of the three simultaneous elections.
In order to achieve this every ballot book was barcoded and then allocated to a specific election kit utilising specialised software that was previously developed by Uniprint. Each Kit box had 20 Presidential books, 20 Parliamentary books and 20 Local books plus training papers and tactile folders. The software controlled kit content, palletision and delivery region. While computer control of the entire process was essential, it required perfect organisation of the printed matter in the warehouse, so that the correct ballot papers were allocated to the correct region efficiently and quickly. An entire army of staff undertook the kitting process. Eventually fifteen simultaneous lines of computers, printers, scanners and people were established to ensure that the right ballot book went into the right box and on the right pallet.
Transport
The tender was awarded on the basis that Uniprint would also handle the transport and delivery to Dar es Salaam. This included all paper work, customs clearance and road transport to the National Electoral Warehouses Because of the time constraints, delivery by sea was not possible and the only option that could ensure timeous delivery was airfreight. However, there are no direct cargo flights from Durban to Tanzania. So the pallets had to be transported over a period of two weeks from Durban to OR Tambo Airport using 42 Super link Tautliners. Just to add to the challenges, Durban doesn’t actually have 42 spare Tautliners in its local economy, so the trucks had to work in shifts, returning to Durban from Johannesburg after every delivery to ensure that the pallets arrived on time! But that was only half of the challenge as Uniprint also planned to lease aircraft. Seven Boeing 777 plus 2 X AN26 charter cargo planes were chartered from various airlines to carry the enormous load and each plane had to be specially palletised after each Tautliner arrived at the airport. Six flights went smoothly but the seventh was cancelled three days prior to the election due to a technical fault!
After all this effort, Uniprint looked doomed to fail on the last delivery. However, some neat last-minute scrambling produced another plane, which arrived just in time to ensure that the material reached Tanzania prior to the election date. Over the pacy four-week period, many of the staff at Uniprint hardly slept and Uniprint Group CEO Bharat Mehta, who was in charge of the project, says with pride: “The commitment from employees at all levels was nothing short of miraculous. Despite the fact that blood-pressure levels were pretty high throughout the project, there were major learnings in terms of organisation and kitting.
"These will be used to increase efficiency levels in future projects and to improve performance across the board.
"At the end of the project, there were zero complaints and plenty of congratulations from the Tanzanian authorities as ALL printed matter was delivered on time and in full.”
This is a story of South African expertise, commitment and resourcefulness reaching into Africa and ensuring that, free and fair elections are more than possible.