At a media briefing yesterday. May 27, the Electoral Commission of Ghana finally announced a commencement date for a new voters register.

According to the Deputy Chairperson of the EC in charge of Corporate Services, Dr Eric Bossman Asare, the exercise will start in the last week of June and end in the last week of July.

This decision, after Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting, will see over 12 million Ghanaians registering.

In cognizance of the novel Coronavirus pandemic that has shattered the globe, the EC announced that this exercise will be a little different from previous ones.

To make sure all safety protocols are adhered to against the virus, the Commission disclosed how they will go about the exercise.

New format for the registration

The registration will be carried out in five phases over a 38-day period in 33,367 registration centres.

In each constituency, the EC will group five registration centres into a cluster and all clusters will be covered in the five phases of the exercise.

Each team will be made up of two registration officers, two data entry clerks, one laminator and one registration officer in charge of special duties.

Each phase for the five clusters will last for six days. The registration officers will go to the first phase of the five registration centres in that cluster. They will be there for six days, rest on the seventh day and retool.

They will move to the next registration centre until the last phase. That will give you 30 days and four days’ rest, making 34 days.

The registration team will rest on the 35th day and use the last three days of the 38-day exercise for a mop-up to register those who could not register.

Every registration centre would have hand sanitisers, Veronica buckets with water and liquid soup. Also, when registrants enter a registration centre, their temperatures would be checked.

If the temperature is above the maximum, then we will go to the medical team to come and check on the person. The medial team will then decide whether or not to quarantine him.