EC educates people on biometric registration

An official of the Electoral Commission (EC) has appealed to political parties not to transport party supporters from one electoral area to the other for the purposes of registering in the forth coming biometric registration exercise.

Mr Yaw Afi, Sunyani West Supervisor of the Electoral Commission (EC), said those who would be caught would be prosecuted.

He was speaking at a one day workshop organised by the EC at Odumasi, attended by more than 60 participants made up of traditional authorities, representatives of political parties, heads of departments and civil society organisations.

He explained that during the exercise the faces of individuals must be seen clearly to give their clear identification and urged especially women to push all their hair back to ensure that both ears appear clearly before taking the photograph.

Nana Kwame Agyekum, the District Electoral Officer, appealed to the participants to accept and embrace the biometric registration to help reduce numerous problems that the EC used to face in the manual registration.

He said, Ghana, had to adopt the biometric system to meet the current technological changes in the world, adding that, the same requirement used in the manual method had not changed except the demand for identification cards to prove a person’s nationality.

The district polling centers will be grouped in 28 registration centres instead of the existing 111 pooling centers under the cluster method, the supervisor said, explaining that four polling stations would become one center in cluster groupings to make the registration process easier to complete within the 40 days schedule.**