Sylvia Annor: We’ll institute COVID-19 safety protocols before undertaking registration exercise

The Electoral Commission (EC) has assured the electorate that it will put the necessary safety protocols in place to ensure that they are adequately protected against COVID-19 contraction while undertaking the exercise.

In furtherance of that it indicated that not more than 25 people would be permitted at a registration centre at a given time when the commission begins the mass voter registration exercise for the December polls.

Sylvia Annor, the Communications Director for the Electoral Commission, made the disclosure and noted that the commission was poised to develop a new voters’ roll for the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections.

“At each point in time we will ensure that we do not have more than 25 persons including the officials at any registration centre, people coming to register will be given hand sanitisers before they enter the registration centre, you need to wear a face mask, without a face mask you cannot enter a registration centre and there will be no crowding at the registration centre, I can assure you,” she said.

Ms Annor reiterated the EC’s position that existing Voter’s ID cards would not be accepted as proof of identity during the registration exercise and insisted that the electorate needed a Ghanaian passport or Ghana card, if for one reason or the other the electorate don’t have any of the two then they have to get two guarantors to guarantee for them.

“We are not using the old voters’ ID card, the voters’ ID card, some people argue, is not a good index for identification, it’s an established fact that the ID card is not a good index for proof of identification,” she maintained.

But the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has alleged that the EC and the National Identification Authority (NIA) are conspiring to suppress votes in the strongholds of the party.

Addressing a news conference recently, Ofosu Ampofo, the National Chairman of the NDC, alleged that the decision of the commission to push for the Ghana card, birth certificate and passport as the primary documents required to register during the voters’ registration exercise was part of a grand scheme to rig the 2020 elections in favour of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).-starrfmonline.com