Day One and Two of
the nationwide exhibition of the biometric voters’ register in Ho has recorded
fewer number of prospective voters turning up at the exhibition centers to
verify data collated from them by the Electoral Commission during the recent
biometric voter registration exercise.
The low turnout according
to some of the exhibition officers, who were idling at their centres, is due to
low publicity about the exercise and also the Ghanaian lukewarm attitude towards
events of this nature.
A visit to some of
the centers on Sunday afternoon revealed that less than hundred persons and in
some cases a little over hundred persons have verified their information in the
register within the first two days of the 10 days exercise which started on Saturday
September 1.
At the Ho polytechnic
exhibition centre, 25 persons came out for the exercise as of 4:25pm on Sunday as
against 16 persons on Saturday out of a total number of 1022 registered voters.
The situation wasn’t
different at Ho Kpodzi JHS ‘B’ exhibition center, out of a total of 669 registered
voters, only 25 persons have turned up for the verification exercise as of 5:15pm
on Sunday as against 10 persons on Saturday.
Mr. Raymond Kporvu and
Ms. Victoria Keleve, the exhibition officers at Ho poly and Ho Kpodzi JHS ‘B’ respectively,
attributed the low turnout at their centers to the vacation of Polytechnic and
SHS students as they constituted majority of registered voters at those centers.
Also at the SSNIT
flats exhibition center, 43 persons turned up for the exercise as of 4:35pm on
Day two with 66 persons turning up on Day one from a total of 996 registered
voters. Ms Sabina Essandoh, exhibition officer at the center, said she sometimes
have to call passerby’s whose names are on the register or send children to
call their parents to come and verify their particulars.
The turn up at Ho Bankoe
Kponyigba E.P JHS, according to the exhibition officer, Mr. Simon Kokofi was ‘remarkable,
though people were not willing to come out and check their name’. Day one of
the exercise saw 127 persons out of 1177 registered voters coming for the
verification as against 120 persons who turned up on Day two of the exercise.
The turn up, Mr. Kokofi
attributed to the benevolence of some youth in the area who went round to
inform residents about the exercise.
Mr Kokofi is
therefore calling on the Electoral commission and other relevant institutions to
intensify publicity on the exercise into the communities and churches in order
to get more people to undertake the verification exercise before it ends on September
10.
So far, those who
have verified their details have not encountered any major errors in their data
in the register except the increase in the ages of some of them by a year.
Meanwhile,
the Electoral commission have introduced an SMS technology to facilitate the
checking of biometric details during the Voter Exhibition period.
This SMS system is to
help registered voters access the Provisional Voters Register through their
mobile handsets at the lowest possible network rates.
Registered voters can
therefore verify their biometric registration details by texting their Voter Identification Number (I.D) numbers
to short code 1413 across all
networks in Ghana.
In a related
development, Madam Lawrencia Kpatakpa, the Volta regional Director of the Electoral
Commission has said, persons who have misplaced their new voter I.D cards can
still go and verify their details at the centers that they have registered. She however cannot confirm whether there would
be a replacement of lost I.D cards before the elections.
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