The Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana has expressed worry over the bloated 2008 voters’ register during the 2008 exercise.
Director of the Information Technology Department of the EC, Mr. Hubert Akumiah, made this known when the EC took its turn in the first dialogue at the on-going third edition of the policy fair held in Accra last Wednesday.
The forum was on the topic ‘All you must know about the 2012 General Elections.’
Mr. Akumiah mentioned that these anomalies necessitated for the introduction of the Biometric form of registration, which is aimed at curtailing the multiple registrations by some unscrupulous individuals.
The EC officer in his submission defined biometric as the use of human body characteristics such as DNA, voice and facial features to uniquely identify a person. “Ghana is using the ten fingerprints identification and facial recognition type of registration because, it is the most tested and involves less cost respectively.”
The registration, he said, was being done in the cluster method in which 7000 registration kits have been deployed to the ten regions of Ghana. “Registrations will start and end at the same time,” he noted.
“All polling stations in an area will been divided into four clusters and each cluster will have ten days to register adding up to forty days,” he added.
Touching on the challenges, he disclosed that problems with the laptops and keyboards had been solved effectively; adding that problems with printers were not technical but operational and over 500 printers had been shipped to speed up the process.
Mr. Akumiah reiterated that culprits of double registration would have their entries removed from the register, sent to court to be fined or jailed and could only be allowed to vote after five years.
The dialogue was highly attended by representatives from the various political landscape of the country and other individuals representing their respective agencies.
STORY BY: EVANS OSEI BAFFOUR
