The Western Regional office of the Electoral Commission (EC) has appealed to officials of the National Identification Authority (NIA) to ask people who present themselves for the NIA-ID to bring other forms of identification other than a voters identity card.
It said the request for voter's ID by the NIA-ID had compelled people who had lost their ID cards to join the long queues to be registered.
The appeal follows the reported cases of double registration by people who should have requested from the EC the replacement of their ID instead of presenting themselves for fresh registration.
“Please ask them other forms of identification that are nationally accepted. If they present their voters ID fine, but if you ask them and they don’t have, ask them for other identification,” the Deputy Regional Director of the EC, Mr George Gyabaah, appealed to the NIA and other organisations.
According to Mr Gyabaah, people who were supposed to report their missing IDs to the EC for replacement were rather registering all over again.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Sekondi, he said “in their quest to get the national ID, when the officers asked them to go and bring their voters ID and they could not find it immediately, they then go and join the queue to register.”
“Just yesterday, a middle-aged woman walked to our offices with two voters ID cards that she had been asked to bring a voters ID card and since she could not find the old one she went to register again, but when she got home she found the old one, therefore, she has to return the new one to the EC,” he said.
He said there were other forms of identifications such as driver’s license, Health Insurance ID and passport and that if the officials asked the people to go and bring their voter’s ID they should be specific to ask them to bring other IDs if they did not have the voters ID.
He further explained that when someone brought a case of missing ID card, they would have to fill a form in order for information to be retrieve for a new card to made available to them during the exhibition of the voters register .
“The exercise at the moment is for those who are between 18 and 20 years and interestingly those in the targeted group are being relegated to the background,” he said.
Asked if the EC was aware of the reported cases of logistical constraints at the various centres, he said only a shortage of form A1 had been reported in some parts of the region, adding that “as we speak the vehicle is moving from Accra to the region undertake distribution”
Mr Gyabaah said depending on the population of the areas the centres are located, they allocated between 4,000 and 10,000 to the respective communities.
He also deplored the failure on the part of some party agents to make use of the challenge form to register their protest.
When the Daily Graphic moved through some parts of the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis, most centres had long queues.
The officials in the rural communities such as Elubo and Axim said that on a day, they registered between 55 and 60 people, whereas in the metropolis the officials said they registered between 120 and 130 a day.
That aside, they also complained about the lack of batteries for the cameramen.
When contacted, the Deputy Commissioner of Police in command of the Western Regional Police, DCOP Mohammed Arhmed Alhassan, said the police personnel would not be positioned at centres but they would from time to time go round.
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