Hundreds in Tema queue to register with EC

Hundreds of people stormed the Tema Metropolitan office of the Electoral Commission (EC) on Monday to register with the national electoral roll and participate in national and local elections.

The prospective voters who were mostly young people defied every urge to walk away even though the process started off at a slow pace.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Monday at the Tema Metro Office of the Electoral Commission (EC), the Tema Metropolitan Director of the EC, Nana Oduro Numapau, was happy many people had heeded the call to come in their numbers to register.

He, however, attested to the slowness of the process by saying, “Our online system is down, so we are using the offline method. That is why it is slow. This is a national issue so when they are able to solve the problem at the head office, the line would work faster than what we are seeing,” said Mr. Numapau.

He was optimistic that, when the lines are restored, they would be able to register close to three hundred people a day which would help them cover as many people as possible within the 21 days.

He said the slow pace of the exercise was not deliberate “because the data side is not working fast so when you even register a lot there and they come here, they would not actually be able to go through the system.”

Mr. Numapau said his office was currently using machines that were not using the network that was why they were still registering people.

“The network is a life system, so as soon as you register the person, the name and the particulars is added to the national data. But what we are doing now was that, after registering, we have to use the pen drive and back the information up to the national data.”

The Metro EC boss indicated that such challenges were normal with the first day of the exercises, “But now that we have seen what the problem is we would fix it so that subsequently, we will do the right thing and register more people than what we are doing today.”