Electoral Commission says registration exercise in New Juaben is a success

A total of 113,000 people got their names registered in the just ended biometric registration exercise in the New Juaben North and New Juaben South constituencies of the New Juaben Municipality.

The figures are a little over the previous number of 96,000 voters in the 2008 register, Ms Lydia Agyiri, the Municipal Electoral Officer, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview in Koforidua on Tuesday.

She said her outfit also recorded 82 challenge forms and described the exercise as very successful except a few technical hitches experienced at the initial stages in some areas that were later redressed.

Ms Agyiri said the municipality was expected to register more than 120,000 prospective voters at the end of the exercise but that target could not be met.

“Although we could not achieve our target of 120,000, we were able to increase the number by 17,000” she said.

She appealed to the people to ensure that they check their names for corrections when the Electoral Commission (EC) put the compiled register on exhibition.

Ms Agyiri attributed the success of the exercise to collaboration of the representatives of all the political parties, especially the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

She once again reminded people who moved from their original polling station to register at a different polling station to understand that they would be compelled to vote at that centre during the election in December and other subsequent elections.

Ms Agyiri assured the political parties and all stakeholders that the EC would do all it could to make this year’s presidential and parliamentary elections successful.

She commended all stakeholders including the police, political parties, civil society organizations and registration officers for making the exercise successful and incident free.**