Coronavirus: Deploy security services to maintain safety protocols; GMA to EC

The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has called on the Electoral Commission (EC) to deploy security services to help observe all Covid-19 protocols in the on-going voter registration exercise.

The Association says the failure of the EC to enforce observance of the protocols could result in a spike of more Covid-19 cases.

This comes after reports that safety protocols, especially social distancing, were not observed on the first day of the new voter registration exercise.

Speaking to Accra based Citi FM, the President of the Association, Dr. Frank Ankobea said the EC should ensure adherence to all the protocols in order not to increase the risk of high cases after the exercise.

He added that refusal to enforce protocols could expose more health workers to the virus.

“We as healthcare providers or healthcare workers, we are only asking them to maintain the safety protocols to make sure social distancing is maintained, facemask wearing is maintained, hand washing and all that. We have actually told them, we don’t want, after this, then we have to fight because people ignored all these things.”

“If we have to use the security services to maintain all these things so be it because we do not want any infections anymore which eventually will end up coming to the health workers. So far we have some of our healthcare workers who have been infected, as the numbers go up, the possibilities of most health workers getting infected is there.”

New Voter Registration

The mass voters registration exercise to prepare for the December 7, 2020 general election started on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.

The exercise is to be undertaken in five phases to cover 33,367 polling stations put into 6,788 clusters across the country.

However, registrants showed up without facemasks as well as breaking the social distancing protocols.