Consulting Ramadan, others in deletion process not necessary – EC

The Electoral Commission(EC) has justified the exclusion of petitioners- Abu Ramadan and Evans Nimako from the processes leading to the deletion of over 56,000 names of NHIS registrants from the electoral roll insisting it was unnecessary to consult the two on the exercise.

The two secured a directive from the supreme court that saw the EC finally complying with a deletion order given by the apex court to remove all NHIS voters who registered with the National Health Insurance card prior to the 2012 elections.

They have however expressed their disappointment with the EC for failing to involve them in the deletion processes.

But the Head of Communications at the EC, Eric Dzakpasu said the commission did not find the need to consult the two after it consultations with the various political parties.

“…If they are not too happy-too bad! Because we had a clear cut specific orders from the Supreme court to go and delete forthwith and these are names which are in our national database. So having identified them the order was to delete so immediately we deleted then we roll out the modalities and got the stakeholders involved.

In the spirit of transparency we got the stakeholders involved alright and deletion was a matter of just deleting and we’ve deleted,” he said in an interview with Accra-based Citi FM.

The Commission on Wednesday, July 13, 2016 announced that it had deleted the names of all NHIS registrants in compliance with the court’s order and will give the affected persons a window to re-register on Monday [July 18, 2016] if they are able to prove their Ghanaian citizenship.”

A list of some 56,772 persons was subsequently released as names of those who were captured on the electoral roll on Thursday after the deletion process.