By Prince Acquah
Ajumako (C/R), May 07, GNA – The limited voters registration exercise scheduled to start at 07:00 hours is yet to commence at the Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam District office of the Electoral Commission (EC) more than four hours after the scheduled time.
This is due to “some nationwide technical challenges” with the Commission’s registration kits which is making it difficult for the officials to log in their credentials as well a challenge with the network.
The situation has created long queues at the EC’s office as scores of registrants, including Senior High School students have thronged the centre in their numbers to partake in the exercise.
There have been no physical agitations towards the officials, but many registrants, some of whom claim they arrived as early as 0400 hours, have expressed disquiet with situation.
The district EC office is operating two centres; the main centre which has three different teams and a mobile centre dedicated for hard-to-reach communities.
It was not clear if the mobile team had started with the process at the time of filing this report, but the main centre was yet to start as of 11:00 hours.
Despite their frustrations, the registration centre is calm as registrants are seen sitting and standing and chatting in groups.
Madam Eunice Bonsi, the District Electoral Officer, was confident of a stable network earlier in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) as she said unstable power supply was their challenge, but they had secured a generator set against that.
“Normally, if the light goes off, that is when we have network challenges but since we have a standby generator, when it goes off, that means we still have stable network,” she said.
She said all materials necessary for the exercise were available and ready and was not anticipating any challenge in that regard.
Madam Bonsi predicted a low turnout in this exercise due to the recently held one in 2023 few months back in which they registered about 4,000 new voters.
She was hopeful that the entire exercise would be calm and peaceful.
GNA