The Upper East Regional directorate of the Electoral Commission (EC) says it has been unable to register final year students of second cycle schools eligible for the voter identification card.
The Ghana Education Service, through the Ministry of Education, directed heads of senior high schools to send home any final year student who leaves the school’s premises because of the threat of the coronavirus.
But according to the EC directorate, all registration centres have been gazetted for the ongoing voter registration exercise and there is no room for extra centres that could accommodate students in their schools.
Speaking to Citi News, the Upper East Regional Director of the EC, William Obeng Adarkwa said, the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service should instead consider reviewing their stances to enable eligible students to leave school to register.
In the meantime, he said, “if you are in a Senior High School close by a registration centre, I have directed my officers to liaise with the heads of those senior high schools to organise their students to go in batches to register.
“Of course, if you register and you don’t reside at a place where you think you can vote, you will wait for the voter transfer period to then transfer your vote to where you vote,” he added.
This notwithstanding, he noted that “if for any reason the Ghana Education Service because of this pandemic or otherwise is restricting the students not to come and register then I don’t know what we [EC] can do.”
“We can only engage them [the schools] but if they organise the eligible students well in a coordinated manner, I think we can help the students to register.”
