The Western Regional Director of the Electoral Commission, Angelina Tagoe says it does not expect a repeat of the technical glitch the Western Region suffered during the pilot exercise in today’s voter registration exercise.
Speaking to Citi News in Sekondi, Angelina Tagoe said 237 registration centres would be used across the Western Region for the first phase of the exercise which will last for six days.
She said the exercise will be rotated to cover all the 2,232 polling stations in the region by the end of the exercise which begins today, June 30 and ends on August 6, 2020.
Angelina Tagoe was confident the breakdown of Biometric Verification Machines that abruptly ended Western Region’s pilot exercise will not happen again.
“It was a technical hitch that happened and we don’t think it will happen this time around. The main purpose of a pilot exercise is to identify challenges. So the challenges that were identified, we have made sure that it doesn’t happen again in the main exercise. I can give you that assurance. Now we have spare kits at the district offices, so if there is a problem we can quickly run and replace the kit from the District EC office. The capacity for the kits per centre is more than 100. S we can register more than 100 persons [a day].“
She said the distribution of all materials to the districts started two weeks ago and assured applicants of adequate COVID-19 safety measures.
“We will observe all the safety protocols so before you join the queue, we have to take your temperature, wash your hands and observe the social distancing protocols. We also have enough sanitizers to be given to applicants at every stage to sanitize their hands. They should be assured that we have all the safety measures in place to protect them,” she said.
“We have 16 district offices in the region and the aged are encouraged to go there for the registration.”