Limited Registration: Officials confused over location of centre
Registration officials detailed to register eligible voters in the Kwesimintsim Electoral Area in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis initially missed the location of the registration centre.
Madam Florence Quaye, the Registration Officer, told the Ghana News Agency that the Electoral Commission (EC) asked them to go to the Kwesimintsim Catholic Day Care Centre for the registration exercise.
However, after successfully registering four persons at the centre, she received a call from an official of Commission, asking them to rather move to the Kwesimintsim Catholic JHS for the exercise even though the brown envelop that contained the forms had Kwesimintsim Catholic Day Care Centre, including the registration centre code written at the back.
When the GNA inquired from the EC, it gathered that the current location of the Catholic JHS was where the Day Care Centre was previously located.
Mr. Stephen Opoku-Mensah, the Western Regional Director of the EC, gave the assurance that it would amend its records, in order to reflect the correct location.
As at 1105 hours, the centre had registered only six persons, comprising five females and one male, while there were people waiting anxiously in a queue to be registered.
The scanner, which was supposed to capture the biometric data of registrants, could not capture the finger prints of some prospective applicants; therefore they cleaned their fingers with the wipes provided by the EC several times before it finally captured them.
There were only New Patriotic Party and National Democratic Congress polling agents at the centre observing the exercise.
Although there were no police personnel stationed at the centre, the Kwesimintsim District Police Commander, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), Thomas Bayor, visited there briefly in a patrol vehicle to observe the exercise and left for another registration centre.
Out of 640 registration centres in the Region, the exercise is being conducted in 320 centres.
The exercise, which is one of the major events ahead of the elections on November 7, seeks to register persons who have turned 18 and those who are not on the electoral roll.
The Electoral Commission has said it expects to register about 1.2 million people during the two-week exercise.
Source: GNA