Accra, Sept. 12, GNA - The Electoral Commission (EC) on Friday announced the recruitment of 30,110 temporary staffs to supplement its permanent staff strength of 1,500 for Election 2008 operations. The temporary staffs would be made up of 230 Returning Officers (RO), 460 Deputy Returning Officers, about 21,004 Presiding Officers, and about 84,016 Polling Assistants.
Each Constituency would be managed by one Returning Officer and two deputies, whilst the Polling stations would be administered by one Presiding Officer to be supported by four Polling Assistants, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, EC Chairman stated during the fourth in a series of educational seminar and study tour of the commission's facilities by regional representatives of political parties.
The fourth study tour was organised by the Commission and attended by political party representatives from the Central and Eastern, who were educated on the operations of the EC, the structure of the commission, operations at both the data processing and elections departments and other electoral issues.
Dr. Afari-Gyan, said selection criteria would be based on their experience in electoral duties, competence, political neutrality and commitment.
"All qualified temporal staffs would be taken through comprehensive training manual before final confirmation," he said. On the electoral framework, the EC Chairman said the commission has fixed September 12th to 16th for people who started the registration formalities during the recent Limited Voter Registration Exercise but due to operational hiccup could not complete the formalities take their photographs.
October 5 to 11 has been projected for exhibition of the Provisional Voter's Register to afford persons who had applied to be registered the opportunity to verify and, where necessary, to request for the correction of errors in their particulars on the register. He said the exhibition would also afford the persons whose names had been inadvertently omitted the opportunity to request for their names to be included in the register.
The exhibition would also afford the general public the opportunity to object to any ineligible names - people under 18 years, or foreigners on the register.
Dr Afari-Gyan called on the general public to assist the Commission clean the register as the current provisional list contains names which should not be there.
The EC Chairman noted that democracy calls for self-discipline and self-policing by all stakeholders including politicians, journalists, electoral officials, security officials and the general public. On calls for the change of the December 7, polling date, Dr. Afari-Gyan said date for the Presidential and Parliamentary election was fixed in accordance with the constitutional requirement. "Any alteration in the date would create a constitutional crisis as either the Presidential or the Parliamentary election would be illegal," the EC Chairman stated.
The Commission also accepted recommendation from the political parties that at exactly 1700 hours on Election Day all those in the queue should be given a tagged in addition to the Security Officer standing behind the last person to ensure that no one enters the queue later.
Mr David Adeenze Kangah, Deputy Chairman in Charge of Finance and Administration and Mr Kwadwo Osarfo Kantanka, Deputy Chairman in-Charge of Operations took turns to educate the politicians on the mandate of the Commission, its structure and administrative operations. Mr Albert Kofi Arhin, Director of Elections and Mr Hubert Akumiah, Director of Information and Technology Departments showed the team around the promises of the Commission, including the data processing and the operations room - "Strong Room."
