Thick crowd at New Juaben South Municipal registration center for mop-up

Correspondence from Eastern Region:

Brows are highly raised as scores of voter applicants have thronged the New Juaben South Municipal office of the Electoral Commission to have their names imprinted in the new voter register.

The Electoral Commission, as part of the compilation of the new voter register, has set aside two additional days for a mop-up exercise to allow all who could not register to be voters in the 2020 general elections to do so.

The mop-up exercise commences on Saturday August 8 and ends on Sunday August 9, 2020.

Many were those who thought only a few applicants would turn up for the mop up exercise but the situation at the New Juaben South office of the EC displays the opposite.

As early as 6am, a thick crowd of registrants were already in queue even before registration officials arrived to set up the center for the registration exercise.

A near brawl between supporters of the two major political parties in the country - NPP and NDC - as they exchanged heated words in bid to prevent each other from bussing applicants to the center.

As at the time Ghanaweb Eastern Regional Correspondent got to the registration center for the mopup exercise at around 2pm, the queue was still long and uncountable persons standing around the registration center premises amidst a heavy security presence.

Ghanaweb gathered that a total of 10 applicants had been challenged on premise that those applicants were either non-residents of the New Juaben South Municipality or were underaged.

Despite the storm of applicants and political party faithfuls, the heavily built security men and women had been able to maintain order at the registration center.

Some of the personalities seen at the center included the New Juaben South Municipal Chief Executive, Isaac Apaw-Gyasi and the Parliamentary candidate for the NPP, Michael Okyere Baafi, who doubles as the Executive Secretary of the Ghana Free Zones Authority.