Over 1.1 million people register in W/R

The Western Region registered 1,166,000 voters at the end of the biometric registration excluding those who registered during the fourth phase of the registration.

According to the Electoral Commission, it is collating the figures of the last phase of the registration exercise and would soon come out with the official figures.

The Western Regional head of the Electoral Commission (EC), Mr Stephen Opoku Mensah told newsmen in Sekondi on Monday that the novelty biometric registration ended successfully in the region without problems.

'The region did not experience much violence as witnessed in other regions, adding that, occasionally they experienced breakdowns of the registration equipment, especially the printers but were repaired quickly for the exercise to continue", he said.

He said the projected voter population in the region is 1.3 million and hoped that after the collation of the whole figures, the projected figure would be achieved.

The Regional EC head acknowledged the peaceful manner the whole exercise was conducted, commended the public and the representatives of the political parties.

Mr Opoku Mensah indicated that, over 2000 double registrations have been detected and assured the public that, those names would be deleted to clean the voters’ register before the December general elections.

Asked whether the exercise would be extended, he said after the 10 regions had submitted their reports to Accra for analysis, the EC would determine whether it is necessary to extend it and therefore urged those who could not register to exercise patience.

Meanwhile, the Western Regional Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. J. R. D. Kobinah has appealed to the EC to take into consideration the lapses encountered in the exercise and extend it to enable those who could not register to do so.

He observed that, there were reported cases of shortage of registration materials and the breakdown of some of the equipment, which did not allow some people to register.

The country’s novelty biometric registration ended last Saturday, May 5, after 40 days of nationwide registration of prospective voters.**