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The lives of some supervising officers who are helping the Electoral Commission (EC) in the re-registration and verification of voter registrants are in grave danger in some parts of Accra because they are being terrorized by wee smokers.

The Daily Heritage can confirm after some days’ monitoring that, instead of 6:00pm being the official closing time for these officers, some of the centers rather close at 4:00pm to avoid the wrath of the wee smokers who take over the centers to scare them.

This development the paper can confirm has also added to the slow pace of the process because anybody who comes after 4:00 pm goes back home.

 No security

Monitoring done by the paper after a week into the exercise indicates that there is no security provision for the officers carrying out the exercise and for fear of being attacked they retire earlier than they should.

For instance, in the Nungua Cluster of School, moments after school had closed, the wee smokers take over the schools in the same area the officers have been stationed to carry out their work and bombard them with their smoke.

Some of the officers who spoke to the Daily Heritage on condition of anonymity said, “This place is not safe for us because the moment school is over, you will see the wee smokers all over this place. We have no security officers here and our lives are in danger so, the moment we see that they are becoming too much we close.

“Here school closes at 4:00 pm so by 4:30pm they are all over this place and because we sit here all day without any security we close before the 6:00pm time.

Another office also said “these smokers will not allow us to close by 6:00pm because by 4:00pm they are all over this place smoking and doing all manner of things. Our lives here are not safe so the moment we see them coming we pack off and close.”