Ghana Card for Voter Registration: Speaker has not summoned us to brief him on new CI - EC

The Electoral Commission of Ghana has said that it has no knowledge of a directive from the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, asking the Commission and officials of the National Identification Authority (NIA) to appear before him with a briefing over the new Constitutional Instrument seeking to make the Ghana Card the sole document for the registration of voters ID.

According to the Director of Electoral Services at the EC, Dr. Serebour Quaicoe, the commission does not operate with hearsay.

He added that if indeed the Speaker has issues with the process, he must officially write to the Commission.

Dr. Serebour's comment comes on the back of a warning from the Alban Bagbin, asking the EC to forget laying the new C.I in parliament if they fail to meet the leadership of the House.

But in the view of the EC, they cannot honour the Speaker’s request when they haven’t been officially invited.

“We’ve not heard anything from the speaker. Officially they have to write to us if they have issues with our C.I. We have no letter from parliament and we don’t work with hearsay. We’ve already met the subsidiary committee and the budget committee but nobody has invited us to come because we can only go to parliament when we have been invited. It’s like going to somebody’s house without invitation,” Dr. Serebuor said in an interview with the host of Kumasi-based Oyerepa TV’s morning show, Kwesi Parker-Wilson.

Dr. Serebour further explained that the move by the EC to make the Ghana Card the sole document for the registration of voters ID remains unchanged.

He added that NIA officials have so far captured about 17 million Ghanaians into its system.

“We met the NIA officials about 2 weeks ago and per the statistics, they have covered more than 17 million Ghanaians. The backlog now is about 400,000 that is persons who are yet to receive their cards after being registered. I can tell you that some of the district officers are empty now because the NIA officials have registered everyone in the district."

“People are no more complaining about the issuance of the card and we have two more years to go so we are still standing by our earlier position,” he added.

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