The Electoral Commission (EC) will today begin a two day registration exercise for all eligible final year Senior High School (SHS) students in the country.
This followed an emergency Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting held between the EC and IPAC yesterday.
As part of the extended exercise, mobile registration officers from the EC had been deployed to about 700 SHS campuses from July 10 to Saturday July 11 to register applicants, the Commission has said.
Confirming the registration exercise, the Director of Electoral Services at the EC, Dr Serebour Quaicoe, mentioned that, the decision was arrived at, after the Ghana Education Service (GES) had written to the Commission.
He added that, the GES made a point to the EC that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) protocols for final year students who had returned to schools had prevented them from participating in the ongoing mass registration exercise.
According to Dr Quaicoe, the decision to organise the special exercise for the students was to prevent any qualified students from being disenfranchised.
“The students will get an opportunity to register and get their names on the electoral roll when our officials go to the schools. But it must be noted that those centres will not be permanent,” he said.
While the ruling political party New Patriotic Party (NPP) was in support of the decision, the National Democratic (NDC) was against the decision, however, the decision was agreed on.
The NDC has described as bizarre, the decision by the Electoral Commission of Ghana to start registering final-year students of all the senior high schools on campus.
BY FRANCIS NTOW
