Bolgatanga, Sept 26, GNA - The District Assembly and Unit Committee Elections took off smoothly at all polling stations in the Bolgatanga Municipality on Tuesday morning.

At almost all the voting centres, the exercise began at 0700 hours, and although the long queues were missing, there were indications that the process was progressing steadily.

The Presiding Officers the Ghana News Agency spoke to at the polling stations were of the view that though slow at the start, turn out would pick up later in the day when majority of the residents would have returned from their farms.

At the Abilba Primary school polling station, 55 out of 700 registered voters had cast their vote as at 0800 hours, while 25 out of 400 registered voters had cast their votes at the House of Chiefs polling station at about 0815 hours.

At the Atulba-Daboo polling station, 132 out of 163 registered voters had cast their ballots as at 0920 hours while At the Daycare Centre "A" polling station, 35 people had voted out of a total of 254, registered voters at 0924 hours. Within the same time, some 24 out of 680 registered voters had cast their ballots at the Daycare Centre "B". At the Presbyterian Primary polling station "A" 50 out of 417 registered voters had cast their ballot at 0923 hours, with 102 out of 679 registered persons voting at the St. Clements's polling station at about 0925 hours.

At the Plaza polling station, 107 people had voted as at 0935 hours, while 117 people had cast their ballots at the JSQ polling station around the same time.

At all the polling centres visited, the atmosphere was generally calm and voting went on smoothly without any incidents. There were no complaints about shortage of voting material either.

Mr. Adam Iddrisu, Regional Director of the Electoral Commission indicated that the exercise had taken off in earnest at all 974 polling centres in the region.

He said there were 729 candidates vying for 270 electoral seats throughout the region in the District Assembly Election, while 4,161 candidates were contesting in the Unit Committee polls. The total number of registered voters in the entire Upper East Region currently stands at 442,169.

Within the Okaikoi South constituency, there was general apathy towards the district level elections, as voter turn-out at most polling stations appeared to be very low.

Areas visited by the GNA revealed that public interest in the election was low, as there were no queues with voters only trickling in. At 0700 hours when voting was expected to start, there was only one person waiting at the Bishop School Polling station at Bubuashie to cast her vote.

At the Kaneshie Pentecost Church Polling Station 93B=94 materials for voting arrived at 0750 hours whilst at Station 93A=94 about 40 people had cast their vote by 0800 hours.

At the Kaneshie 1 and 4 Primary, only 50 people out of a total of 1,715 people had voted by 0900 hours.

Some commercial drivers around the Kaneshie Market told the GNA in an interview they would vote later in the day when business went down. "As for the morning, we need to make some money," Mr Kusi Mensah, a taxi driver said.