A total of 544 voters were enrolled onto the voters’ register on the first day of the ongoing limited voter’s registration exercise in the Upper East Region amid challenges of poor network.
This figure comprised 371 males and 173 females, out of which were two persons with disability.
The Bongo District recorded the highest number of registrants of 106 while the Builsa South District registered only three voters, the lowest among the 15 municipal and districts across the region.
However, three persons had their registration challenged, which would be decided by the District Registration Review Committee comprising representatives of the Electoral Commission (EC), political parties, the Traditional Council, police and Ghana Education Service.
Mr William Obeng Adarkwah, the Upper East Regional Director of the EC, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that despite the few challenges experienced on the first day, the exercise had been generally smooth.
He admitted that majority of the district centres in the region had challenges with the online registration at some point of the exercise and attributed the cause to threats of rainfall.
As part of efforts to deal with the online registration challenges, the Commission had directed centres having those hitches to switch to manual registration to speed up the exercise.
Mr Adarkwah acknowledged that some of the communities were far from the Commission`s district offices and appealed to the stakeholders for support to ensure many of the prospective registrants get enrolled onto the voters’ register.
“We will urge opinion leaders, political parties and anybody patriotic, to assist in certain areas where they think distances are too challenging for prospective registrants to be helped in terms of transport,” he added.
Meanwhile, when the GNA interacted with some potential voters in the queue to get their voter’s card, they expressed frustration at the decision of the EC to do the registration at its district offices alone.
Mr Desmond Dandura, who was waiting to be registered at Paga in the Kassena-Nankana West District, appealed to the EC to reconsider its decision and decentralise the process to the polling stations to allow all eligible voters to register.
He said many of them commuted from long distances to the registration centre, adding “look at the queue, I am not sure I will be able to register today and where will I sleep? or I have to transport myself back home and return tomorrow?”
GNA