Political Parties Urged To Recruit Agents With ICT Background

Political parties have been advised to consider agents with ICT backgrounds in their recruitment for the Biometric Voter Registration Exercise expected to start on March 24. Mrs Faith Amedzake, a Deputy Director of the Electoral Commission (EC), gave the advice when the EC met representatives of political parties in Koforidua on Thursday to brief them on the biometric registration exercise. A pilot registration is expected to take place in the Eastern Region from Saturday February 25 to Tuesday February 28. She explained that the background of the political parties' agents to be engaged during the registration exercise was necessary to enable them understand the processes better and help reduce tensions since the biometric registration involves the use of ICT to a large extent. Mr Erick Mensah-Bonsu, the Deputy Eastern Regional Director of the EC, said the biometric registration exercise would be done in a cluster of four polling stations and each cluster would be allocated with a set of registration kit. He explained that the kit, which would include all the equipment for the registration exercise, would stay at one polling station within the cluster for 10 days and then moved to another polling station. He said the exercise was expected to last for 40 days. Mr Mensah-Bonsu said each district would have a registration plan to be given to public education officers to go round and educate the people on the dates that they should expect the kits at their polling stations. He, therefore, appealed to the political parties to educate their supporters and sympathizers not to rush and chase the kits but rather they should stay at their polling stations and wait for their days. He said clusters for the registration exercise with high voter populations would be allocated two sets of kits, especially those in the urban areas. Mr Mensah-Bonsu said the region had been allocated with 768 sets of kits for the exercise and provided with 16 kits, which would be on standby at the regional office for early dispatch to any cluster that would have problems with their kits. The Deputy Regional Director said the exercise had facilities for the registration of people with disabilities without hands or fingers and said arrangements were also in place for people with hearing impairment to be registered successfully. He said there would be an arrangement where the daily registration data at each polling station would be taken to the district office of the EC and then forwarded to the regional office for onward transmission to the national office of the EC. He took the political party representatives through the registration exercise and assured that provision had been made for the registration at the expected new constituencies to be created by the EC this year.