General News of Wednesday, 2 February 2011

Source: peacefmonline

Volta Region Census Figures Massaged - NPP

The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) is raising eyebrows about the cancellation of the planned news conference by the Ghana Statistical Service to announce provisional results of the 2010 Population and Housing Census and believes there is much more to it than meets the eye.

Speaking in an interview on Citi Eyewitness news, General Secretary of the NPP, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie alleged that the party’s intelligence report indicate that some individuals within the Ghana Statistical Service are trying to manipulate the results from the Volta region.

According to him, the NPP has cause to believe that the service’s inability to announce the provisional results is as a result of some inconsistency in the figures.

“Our intelligence inform us that there are attempts by some people within the statistical service to massage the figures coming from the Volta region and these are some of the reasons why the provisional results could not be announced as planned,” he claimed.

The NPP Chief Scribe said they are keenly awaiting result that will come from the Volta region. According to him, the NPP will not take it quietly if they notice any manipulation in the figures.

“Long after the close of the process, there were some registrations going on in the Volta region and the explanation they gave was that it was a normal exercise and people can still register and be counted…but that was not what transpired in the other regions,” he added.

He said even though the party trust its source, they would want to give the Statistical Service the benefit of the doubt and are still awaiting the announcement of preliminary figures generated from the recently held Population and Housing Census before deciding on their next line of action.