West

Wa, Feb. 17 GNA - The Electoral Commission (EC) is recruiting 3,416 supplementary staff for the impending registration of voters in the Upper West Region.

The exercise starts throughout the country from March 16 and would end on March 29. It is to replace the current register, which has been in use since 1995 and is thought to be highly bloated for any credible and reliable elections.

Mr Kwame Damoah Agyeman, Chief Director of the EC, announced this at a day's briefing workshop for executives of political parties and the Media in the Upper West Region on the impending exercise at Wa. The Upper West Region has 854 out of the 21,000 polling stations in the country.

Political parties represented at the workshop were the New Patriotic Party (NPP), National Democratic Congress (NDC), People's national Convention (PNC) and Conventions People's Party (CPP).

Mr Damoah-Agyeman took the participants through the background to the replacement exercise, problems before registration, recruitment, location of registration centres and educating the general public among other topics.

He said in the impending registration exercise, the EC would be guided by the wealth of experience gathered from previous elections and by-elections to ensure flawless voters registration exercise.

Mr Damoah-Agyemang, therefore, appealed to politicians and other influential persons to desist from influencing the recruitment exercise so as to enable the EC recruit high calibre officers for the exercise. He said the compilation of a credible voters' register was the responsibility of all Ghanaians and not the EC alone and called on all stakeholders, particularly political parties, to ensure that minors and foreigners were not registered.

Mr Damoah-Agyemang said the EC had only 2,000 cameras, hence its inability to provide photo identity cards, simultaneously with the registration exercise but had to be done separately. He said, as one of the measures to curb impersonation at elections, the photograph of all persons to be registered would be on the registration form also.

The EC official appealed to all eligible voters to register since those who would not register would not be eligible to vote in the elections.

Mr Stephen Engman, Special Assistant to the Regional Minister, who was the guest speaker, appealed to all apolitical parties, civil society organisations, traditional authorities and opinion leaders to educate their people on the importance of the registration exercise to ensure that only those who qualified to register did so.