Haruna Iddrisu makes case for increment in EC’s budgetary allocation

Haruna Iddrisu, National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament for Tamale South, has called for an increment in the Electoral Commission’s (EC) budgetary allocation of GH¢786 million, as captured in the 2024 Budget Statement.

He said the EC’s budgetary allocation of GH¢786 million was woefully inadequate and that the electoral body needed adequate resources to conduct the District Assemblies Election this December and the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in December next year.

The Tamale South Lawmaker made the call in his contribution to the ongoing debate on the 2024 Budget on the floor of Parliament in Accra.

“And Speaker, this is what has been provided for them in the Budget, go and make a case for them, it is not enough.”

Touching on Voters’ Registration by the electoral body, Iddrisu said the Minority had been arguing strongly in the House that the EC should not go on with voter registration without the Guarantor System.

He noted that the EC had been arguing for the use of the Ghana Card for Voters’ Registration and that nobody was against the use of the Ghana Card; however, it must be made available and accessible to the extent that every Ghanaian had the Ghana Card, then the Minority would support its usage for Voters’ Registration.

“Mr Speaker, it is revealed in the just ended limited Voters ‘Registration exercise that 61 per cent of people who registered were from the guarantor system, which meant that 900 thousand were registered, 550,000 would not have been registered, if this House hadn’t insisted that the right thing must be done.”

He noted that without Parliament’s insistence that the right thing must be done, the 550,000 people who had registered through the Guarantor System would have been disenfranchised.

Mr Iddrisu urged the House and the Government to ensure that enough resources were allocated to the EC and the National Identification Authority, the body mandated by law to issue the Ghana Card to Ghanaians.

He appealed to the finance minister to redeem his promise of allocating adequate resources to the two bodies, so that they could complete the task before them.