Assembly elections in Northern Region to be rescheduled

Tamale, Dec. 28, GNA - The District Assembly and Unit Committee Elections in the Northern Region are likely to be rescheduled due to the absence of electoral materials for the Unit Committees.

Mr Sylvester Kanyi, Northern Regional Director for the Electoral Commission (EC) said ballot materials for the unit committee elections were not ready explaining that the materials were still in Accra and were yet to be brought to the Region for distribution to the various districts. Mr Kanyi, who was speaking to the GNA in Tamale on Tuesday, said: 93= I am not the one to determine whether the elections would come off or not but what I am aware of is that materials for the Unit Committees Elections are not in".

He attributed the inability of the EC to get the electoral materials to the failure of the printing houses saying that the EC contracted some private printing companies to print the electoral materials for the electio= n but they had not been able to meet the deadline resulting in the problems the EC was encountering.

Mr Kanyi said the ballot papers and the other materials for the District Assemblies had already been distributed to the various districts adding that the elections could not be held since both the Unit Committees and Assemblies elections must run concurrently.

A total of 1,817 persons are contesting the District Assembly Elections in the 20 districts of the Northern Region made up of 1,672 males and 145 females.

The 20 districts had also been divided into 705 electoral areas with 651 being contested for and 54 as non-contesting. In the unit committee elections, 3,975 persons are contesting made up of 3,743 males and 232 females with 705 units out of which 468 were contesting and 218 non-contesting.

The District Assembly and Unit Committee Elections, which were originally scheduled for Tuesday 28th December 2010, were rescheduled nationwide to Wednesday 29th December 2010 with exception of the Upper West and the Central Regions.