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Following the on-going limited registration exercise to allow to Ghanaians who have turned 18 years and above to partake in the November 7, 2016 polls, the General Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketiah has identified one major error permeating in the exercise.

He revealed the major error to be the use of birth certificate as one of the required documents needed in the on-going limited registration; thus the birth certificate together with NHIS Cards are not accepted anymore in the registration.

He added that the nature of birth certification in the country is problematic as there is no system to ascertain the authenticity of the birth certificate; asserting it will create a problem if it is used to certify someone as a Ghanaian.

“And so we have taken birth certificate out as a means to determine someone’s nationality. In the electoral laws now, birth certificate has been taken out as a means of determining nationality and this law was accepted by the political parties at IPAC meeting,” he revealed on Okay FM’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show.

He posited that the NDC agents monitoring the limited registration exercise in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region have intercepted some of the birth certificates, suspecting to be fakes.

“As the first phase is over, I expect the political parties and the EC to announce to the general public because the EC advert does not specify that birth certificate is not part of the requirement needed for the limited registration,” he stressed.

“Passport office has a means to determine fake birth certificate but the EC does not have such means and so that informed us to accept the passport as part of the requirements but with birth certificate, it is easy to fake, which is why it is not part,” he explained.

As agreed at the IPAC meeting, it is easier to get birth certificate because it does not use biometric system to generate the birth certificate and the means to check the birth certificate is not modernised, making it possible for people to generate their own birth certificates.