Co-operate with Electoral Commission - Deputy Chairman
The Deputy Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC) in charge of operations, Madam Georgina Opoku Amankwa, has asked the electorate to co-operate with the EC for the success of the limited voters registration exercise, which commenced on Monday.
The 10-day exercise ends on Wednesday, August 13, 2014.
According to Madam Amankwa, unlike the parliamentary elections where the EC dealt with 275 constituencies, the district level elections covered 6,165 electoral areas, while the Unit Committee elections dealt with 30,825.
She said the higher the number, the more the difficulties for the EC and there was the need for co-operation from all stakeholders to enable the commission to discharge its constitutional mandate.
Madam Opoku Amankwa made the appeal when she presented a paper on District Level Elections at a National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) Inter-District Constitution Quiz Competition in Accra. It was on the theme “Strengthening Our Pillars.”
She said the National Health Insurance (NHI) card would not be accepted as a valid identification for the registration exercise but added that prospective voters should use driver’s licence, passport, National Identity card or voter ID. Alternatively, she said registration could be allowed by attestation of two registered voters in the community.
On district assembly elections, Madam Amankwa said there had always been low voter turnout and stressed the need for all stakeholders to find ways of whipping up the interest of the people in voter registration and elections.
She said there were a lot of qualified people who should offer themselves for assembly elections but they were not interested and appealed to such people to get themselves involved.
Madam Opoku Amankwa urged women to offer themselves in the elections to enable them to participate in the process.
The Ga East Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Mr John Kwao Sackey, who spoke on “The Role of the District Assembly in Ghana’s Democracy,” said we should not look at waste disposal as only a local assembly issue but rather from the national perspective.
He said when all departments were involved in waste management, the agriculture sector, for instance, could manufacture fertiliser and manure from it to serve agricultural purposes.
