Voting extended in two polling stations in Sunyani East Constituency

There was police reinforcement at Methodist Primary “B” Polling Station at Estate, a suburb of Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo Region to maintain law and order and ensure voters who could exercise their franchise within the stipulated time cast their ballots.

There were long queues as at 1700 hours due to a mix-up in the voters register and to facilitate voting, Mr Bismark Siaw, Presiding Officer had to use a megaphone to announce the names in the register for them to form another queue to allow voting to continue.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency, he said the problem begun in the morning because the pages in the register did not tally with that of the final register that contained the photographs of voters.

Mr Siaw said the Sunyani Municipal Electoral Officer was informed about the situation and decided that there should be a roll call of the names in the register before they could identify photographs of the voters before verified to vote.

He noted that although the voters were co-operating with the method it delayed voting since the same register for the roll call was to be used for the verification.

As at the close of voting at 1700, 300 out of the 810 voters in the register had cast their ballots. Mr Kwasi Ameyaw Cheremeh, Incumbent New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for Sunyani East provided electric power to support a rechargeable light provided by the Electoral Commission at the polling station to ensure security of the ballot boxes.

Voters who could not hear their names were seen around hoping another roll call would take place to enable them exercise their franchise.

Similar problem occurred at the GPRTU Office at Chiraa Station 1B with 1,059 voters in the register.

Most of the voters could not identify their names, the verification machine developed a fault and stalled voting for sometime, a new on was brought but on the stroke of closing, the new verification machine developed another fault and a new one was brought with many voters in the queue.

The polling station being a flash point there was reinforcement by military personnel to maintain law and order. Mr Abdul Rahman Baba told the GNA that every voter in the queue would exercise his or her franchise.