Eastern Region NPP to train 2,060 polling agents

Sekesua (E/R), July 21, GNA - The Deputy Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Gustav Narh Dometey said on Wednesday urged Polling Station Executives of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to work hard to ensure that the Party won Election 2004 so that they could influence the allocation of development projects.

He reminded them that if they failed to work hard for their polling stations to score high votes, "then you will be doing a lot of harm to your areas."

Mr Dometey, who is also the Parliamentary Candidate of the NPP for the Upper Manya Constituency, said this at the opening of a day's training programme for polling station executives in the Sekesua Zone of the constituency at Sekesua, on Wednesday.

He called on the polling station executives to form taskforces to embark on house-to-house campaign after the training programme. The Eastern Regional Chairman of the Party, Nana Adi Ankama said the Party would train 2,060 polling station executives of the party by August to man each of the polling stations to enable the Party to achieve its target of winning all the 28 parliamentary seats in the Region.

He said the Upper Manya Constituency was the fifth constituency in the Region to benefit from such training.

Nana Addi Ankama explained that after loosing the 1992 and 1996 elections, the Party embarked on the training of its polling agents and that resulted in its victory in the 2000 elections.

He said in 2004, the Party was targeting to win 170 parliamentary seats and about 60 per cent of the presidential votes, hence it had started the training programme early adding, "this time it is not the polling agents alone, but all the five polling station executives are to be trained to enable them to know their role towards the victory of the Party."

The training session was observed by Mr Duncan Macfarlane and Ms Philippa Broom, both of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, an arm of the Conservative Party of United Kingdom.