Four companies shortlisted for procurement of Biometric Verification Systems for voter register – EC

Dr. Yaw Ofori-Adjei, IT Consultant for the Electoral Commission EC, says some four companies have so far been shortlisted for the procurement of the Biometric Verification Systems for the compilation of a new voters’ register.

According to him, a physical infrastructure is currently also in place for a data center to be established in 8 weeks to compile all electoral data in the build up to the 2020 general elections.

“We have some four companies that have so far been shortlisted for the procurement of Biometric Verification Systems for the compilation of the new voters register. The previous managers of the Biometric Verification System advised the EC that the system needed an upgrade and gave good, cogent reasons why the upgrade was needed. With these new equipments, a facial recognition machine will be used extensively for several purposes; forensics, border control systems, and the elections. It's a technology that has been used and verified.

“For example, these new machines will capture your facial signature and compare it to what is on the record and this is not aimed at eliminating the fingerprint method,” Ofori-Adjei told Citi FM on January 23, GhanaWeb monitored.

On arguments by some Civil Society Organisations (CSO’s) that the Biometric Verification Systems shouldn’t be in bad shape given how sparingly they are used, Ofori-Adjei said; “It's not about how often they are used but how they are used. They are not in good shape. When you inspect the devices being used by the EC, you'll come to terms with the fact that they are in really bad shape and need to be changed,” GhanaWeb monitored his interview on Citi FM.

Dr. Yaw Ofori-Adjei, however, adds that EC just wants to ensure a credible election free of doubt when results are announced.

EC sets April 18 for new voters register compilation

The Deputy Chairperson in charge of Operations at the EC, Mr Samuel Tettey, has disclosed that the compilation of a new voters register for the 2020 elections will begin on April 18, this year.

Mr. Tettey told the Daily Graphic in an interview that the commission has also expressed the hope that it will complete the exercise by May 30, 2020 and intends to mount a voters’ register exhibition from August 15 to August 28, 2020.

Giving details of the EC’s calendar of activities, he said it would deploy 8,000 registration devices to cover the 32,000 polling stations across the country and explained that the EC would use the cluster system for the registration, where four polling stations would form a cluster.

He said although the EC intended to spend 10 days at each cluster, mindful of the fact that the voting population in some polling stations was high, it might exceed the days at some polling stations to ensure that all eligible voters were registered.

Mr Tettey said after the 43-day registration period, the EC would provide a five-day mopping up period to take care of any exigencies.