Turn out at voters’ exhibition centres picking up but problems numerous

A total of 102 voters’ names have been omitted from the voters’ register at the True Church of Christ exhibition centre at Nkwantado in the Cape Coast Metropolis, the Exhibition Officer, Mrs. Dorcas Osei Atobrah has revealed.

She expressed worry that only one of the affected voters had turned up at the centre and she had to fill a form for the person to have the problem solved at the Electoral Commission’s office soon after the exhibition exercise ends.

This came to light when the GNA visited some centres to find out the progress of the exercise in the Metropolis on Monday.

She said all problems to be detected are to be forwarded to the EC’s offices from Thursday, September 13 to 20, for the necessary action to be taken and urged all voters who will be given forms for corrections to contact the EC from the said dates.

Mrs. Atobrah said of the 600 people who registered at the centre only 418 were in the register and appealed to the people through the media to come out in their numbers to check on their names in order not to lose their franchise during the December elections.

She gave the number of voters who have checked their names as 105 since the exercise began on Saturday.

A similar problem was recorded at the Amanful Catholic Primary Centre in Cape Coast, where the names of 32 of the 209 people who should be in the register have been omitted whilst only 18 people have checked their names from Saturday to Monday afternoon.

The Officer- in- Charge, Mr. Ray Arthur, attributed the slow turn out to the SMS introduced by the EC, however, Ms. Georgina Nkum at the Amanful Catholic JHS centre who has 536 people on her register, with only 63 people checking so far, said she tried encouraging the voters to come out and check but to no avail.

She said the people complained of lack of toilets and other amenities in their community and did not see the reason why they should check their names when they were not benefiting from any development projects.

Among other problems the exhibition officers had encountered included wrong ages which were corrected right at the centres, wrongful spelling of names, names of females being marked as males and vice versa.

At the Philip Quaicoe Boys’ the Exhibition Officer, Mr. Richard Mensa Atta, said the turn out was encouraging as a total of 261 of the 992 voters had checked as at Monday noon.

Mr. Bernard Bruce Acquah and Mr. Daniel Emmanuel Afari of the Pedu Metropolitan Authority (MA) Catholic Primary and JHS have 1,253 and 443 people on their registers with 361 and 33 respectively checking from Saturday to Monday morning. At the TwindziTwi and the Amanful Methodist Church centres, 176 of the 769 and 299 of 980 voters had checked.