Accra, Aug. 30, GNA - Mr Kwamena Ahwoi, Former Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, on Tuesday called for a Congress that would review and streamline the many difficulties the local government elections faced for a smooth District Level Elections. Speaking at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) policy forum on: "The District Assembly Elections, Preparations so Far", Mr Ahwoi said most of the problems stemmed from the fact boundaries of electoral areas were demarcated using the 1984 population census when the population of Ghana was 12 million.

Giving an insight into the low participation in the Unit Committee Elections, with 3,771 units having zero nominations out of the 16,000 units, he said the units were initially carved out for electoral purposes to allow the electorate to vote and not for development. They were basically used for registration of births and deaths and for supervision purposes, he said.

For instance, there were about 10 to 20 units in Accra Central Business District alone for people to cast their votes but since nobody specifically lived there it became difficult for people to show interest and stand for the elections there.

Mr Ahwoi said the district demarcations were not population centred and called for a re-demarcati of the districts to reflect the increased population, which now stood at 20 million. He said to improve the participation in the District Level Elections there was the need to give the mandate to the districts to conduct the elections for flexibility to enhance the decentralization process.

He said the legislation should also be reviewed to give women higher slots in the district assemblies to encourage more women to participate.

Mr K. Safo Kantanka, Deputy Commissioner, Operations, of the Electoral Commission, said nomination of female candidates for both the District Assembly

Elections (DEA) and Unit Committee was not encouraging. A total of 14,135 contestants filed nominations for the District Assembly elections out of which 1,753 (12 per cent) were females. At the Unit Committee level 75,691 are contesting with 12,147 being 16 per cent females.