KABUL - While the low voter registration turnout in the country prevails, the Independent Election Commission’s update for the first week of the process shows Kabul and Kandahar were the two leading provinces in terms of numbers of people who registered.
The IEC on Tuesday issued its first weekly report, after launching the voter registration process on April 14. 
According to the IEC, 118,264 people registered in Kabul  - 86,932 were men, 27,105 were women, 4,226 were Kuchis and one was a Sikh.
The southern province of Kandahar had the second highest number, with 66,134 – of which 56,975 were men and 9,159 were women.
Herat, Balkh, Nangarhar and Helmand province followed suit with 19,508; 18,166; 13,953 and 13,636 respectively.
According to the IEC, since the start of the process just over a week ago, 370,669 people have registered to vote in total.
Of this, 277,314 were men and 87,000 were women, 6,351 were Kuchis and four were Sikhs.
Provinces with low turnouts:
Wardak, Nuristan, Panjsher, Badakhshan, Ghor, Uruzgan, Ghazni, Daikundi, Badghis, Paktia, Kunar, Faryab, Kunduz and Kapisa provinces had the lowest voter registration turnout in the week.
The worst voter registration turnout was seen in Wardak, with only 458 people registering. Next was Nuristan with only 578.
Election observers and monitoring groups have blasting the election commission for not having rolled out a comprehensive election awareness campaign.
Critics said the IEC’s failure to conduct such a campaign, and the absence of a voter registration database, were indicative of poor leadership and mismanagement in the election commission.
But the IEC on Monday said it will finalize the voter registration database within the next two days.
“The commission should have made the database very early so that the data would be directly entered in to the database and would be available to the people on the website,” said Yousuf Rashid, chairman of Free and Fair Election Commission Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA).
This also comes just days after the IEC announced the timeline for the country's parliamentary and district council elections which are due to be held in October.
According to the timeline, the voter registration process will end on June 12.
Based on the timeline announced by Sayad, registration of candidates for both parliamentary and district council elections will begin on May 26 and end on June 12.
Based on the timeline announced by Sayad, registration of candidates for both parliamentary and district council elections will begin on May 26 and end on June 12.
A preliminary list of candidates will be announced on June 28 while the final list will be out on August 3.
The candidates can withdraw their nominations between June 29 and August 1.
The campaign for parliamentary elections will begin on September 28 and end on October 17, while that for district council elections will be between October 3 and October 17.
The final results of parliamentary elections will be announced on December 20 while the final results of district council elections will be on January 24.
IEC has meanwhile said that public confidence in the electoral process was badly damaged during the crisis following the 2014 presidential elections and that the commission will do everything possible to rebuild the trust in the process. (Tolo news)