Dawhenya residents unhappy with breakdown of machine

Unregistered electorates at Dawhenya West District, have expressed their unhappiness at the slow pace of the nationwide voter registration exercise in their area.

The town which has four polling stations has been allocated one registration machine for the 40 days exercise.

When the Ghana News Agency got to the Methodist Primary A, the only centre in the town on Sunday at 1130 hours, scores of people had queued waiting for the machine which had broken down to be repaired.

Mr Emmanuel Akrofi Djaban, a pensioner, said in his anticipation to get registered early, he walked about five miles to the registration centre and “I have been sitting here from 0530 in the morning and nothing is going on, if we have to go through this frustration to register what should we expect during the voting?”

Mr Joseph Mensah, Deputy Ningo-Prampram District Supervisor, said the delay to the start of the registration and the breakdown of the machine was unfortunate.

He said the special duty officer for the centre who is in-charge of starting the machine for the exercise to begin was nowhere to be found adding that “he did not answer his phone when I called him”.

He said apart from the breakdown of the machine at Dawhenya, the exercise has been smooth throughout the other centres under his jurisdiction which covers Dawa, Ningo, and Prampram.

Mr Isaac Adovor, Registration Officer for the exercise at Dawhenya, said a total of 91 people were registered on the first day of the exercise adding that it was incident free.

At the time of the visit, agents of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) were present at the centre.**