EC To Register 12 Million Voters In 40 Days

The Electoral Commission (EC) has revealed that 12 million eligible voters are expected to be registered in the upcoming nationwide biometric registration exercise.

The exercise will run from March 24 to May 12, 2012. The nation-wide registration exercise will take place at over 6,000 centres involving over 45,000 officials, the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Dr Afari Gyan has announced.

Speaking at the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG) election forum in Accra, he assured various political parties that “the time for the biometric voter registration is enough”.

Dr Gyan said “a lot of political parties have said that the time is not enough to complete the registration but the EC can deduce from the pilot exercise that was carried out that 100-120 registrations per day is doable.”

Dr Gyan noted that just like Nigeria had a bit of difficulty in the initial stages of their Biometric Registration exercise, the EC has also anticipated some problems that occurred in the early stages of the exercise.

“Nigeria initially had problems but after three days, they became so accustomed to the machine that they could do it rapidly”, he indicated.

“The EC has also anticipated some problems that could occur in the early stages of the exercise and cause it to delay,” he said.

He revealed that some people by the nature of the work they do, have lost the fine lines their fingers and therefore making it very difficult to get their fingerprints.

“During the pilot exercise there was this person we tried to register for more than 20 minutes to get only one fingerprint. Sometimes others also have greasy fingers so we ask them to go and wash.”

“These are all lessons that we’ve learnt -including the fact that after three or four people have placed their fingers on the slab, we must clean the slab and we have put in place the necessary measures in place to avert them ,”Dr Gyan assured.