NDC demands an audit of the information system of EC

Koforidua, June 30, GNA - The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has demanded a complete auditing of the Information Management System of the Electoral Commission (EC). It has also requested that the voters register for the December elections should be made available to the various political parties at least two months before the elections.

The party is also demanding that all the necessary resources be made available to the EC and it must be supported to acquire the necessary technology to enable its information system to capture all the information on the voters' registers of the country. These came out at a press conference organized by the Regional Chairmen of the party after a three-day Regional Chairmen Confab at Koforidua on Sunday. It was chaired by Mr Julius Debrah, the Eastern Regional Chairman of NDC. The party also requested that the EC took all the necessary measures to resolve the challenges raised in the report of the committee which investigated the discrepancies in the voters' registration in Ashanti and other regions.

Mr Daniel Ohene-Agyekum, Ashanti Regional Chairman of the party denied that the party went public immediately it realized that the voters' register was blotted. He explained that when the issue came up in the Ashanti Region, the party first raised the issue on the quiet with the Ashanti Regional Director of the EC. Mr Ohene-Agyekum said the Regional Director promised to take up the matter but after waiting for a long time without and response from the EC, the party decided to take the issue up with its national headquarters and to go public on it. He said the report of the committee which was set up by the EC to go into the issue and the report of the subsequent review committee indicated that there were serious issues which needed to be solved before the December elections to enable the country have credible elections.

Mr John Abu, the Western Regional Chairman of the party called on the EC to develop the capacity to check and protect the database of the voters' register. He said it must endeavour to acquire the necessary programmes that would enable all the information from the various regions to be held together and not on different diskettes.