EC Voters Registration: What Jean Mensa said in her last-minute updates

The much-anticipated voters registration exercise of the Electoral Commission is commencing on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.

Ahead of that, Chairperson of the commission, met with media persons Monday, to relay updates with regards to the exercise.

She, among other things, touched on measures put in place by the EC to ensure the process is safe and risk-free, as far as issues of COVID-19 and its spread are concerned.

Here are some of the key takeaways from her speech:

1. All registration centres will be set up outdoors in open spaces. Where schools, churches, and other centres are being used as registration centres, centers will be set up in open spaces outside the facilities.

2. All furniture will strictly be provided by the Electoral Commission's as has been the policy from times past. Furniture will continually be wiped with alcohol wipes.

3. All People queuing to enter the registration center will be required to wear a nose mask. Temperature will be checked, social distancing will be enforced, and mandatory washing of hands observed. Hand sanitisers will also be provided.

4. Some 7000 health assistants released by the Ghana Health Service to each of the centers nationwide to assist in the strict adherence of safety protocols outlined by the EC.

5. Special arrangements have been made for the elderly and the vulnerable in the registration exercise. All vulnerable persons such as persons with disabilities, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers, the aged who are 60 years and above, as well as the sick, will be given priority at all registration centers.

6. The aged and vulnerable may go to the district offices of the EC across the country for their registration. They have the option of filling out and printing their forms before they go to the registration centers, to help speed up the registration processes.

7. Registration for the aged and vulnerable starts from Thursday, July 2, 2020.

8. 44,000 staff recruited, trained, and deployed into the field.

9. 8,000 biometric voter registration kits deployed into the field, thoroughly tested.

10. Each applicant should not spend more than 10 minutes to go through the registration process.

11. Over 5,000 technicians deployed to the field and zonal centers set up across the country to detect faulty kits.

Mode of registration:

A cluster system will be used. 6788 clusters, made up of 5 polling stations each will be covered. All 33, 367 registration centers will be covered during the exercise. The exercise will be carried simultaneously in all 16 regions across the country.

The entire registration will be done in 5 phases. Each phase will span a duration of 6 days. A registration team will spend 6 days each of the 5 centers of the cluster, that’s 30 days for each cluster. An additional 6 days for the mopping up exercise.