The Electoral Commission (EC) has disclosed that a total of 1,990 applicants were registered at the end of a pilot exercise of the Biometric Voter Registration system in all the sixteen (16) regional capitals in the country.
An EC statement said at the end of the two-day exercise, a total of 1,990 applicants were registered, with 745 applicants registered on day one and 1,245 on day two.
The table below shows the breakdown of registered applicants by region;
Challenges in Western Region
The statement said the exercise went on smoothly at all the designated centres, except in the Western region where the BVR Kit developed a fault on the second day.
“This led to the suspension of the Exercise in the Western region but afforded the Commission the opportunity to test its inbuilt processes of dealing with equipment breakdowns during the registration process,” the statement said.
“The lessons learnt from this investigation will further improve the Commission’s response to such occurrences.
The EC further disclosed that Western Region had the highest number of registered applicants (73) on the first day of the pilot while the Volta Region and Ahafo Region had the highest number of applicants registered with 105 each on the second day.
Confidence
Consequently, the EC says it remains confident of registering over 13 million applicants within the first 21 days of the mass registration exercise.
“Using the expected improved performance on the second day, the average number of registrants registered per day was 83 registrants. This metric is expected to only get better. We aim to register over 100 applicants per kit per day, as was attained by some regions during the pilot. At that level of performance and with the continued participation of the Ghanaian public, the Commission is confident of registering some 13 million plus applicants within the first 21 days of the mass registration exercise.
“The Commission is satisfied with the exercise and will use the lessons learnt to improve upon the conduct of the upcoming Voter Registration Exercise”.
Source: www.graphic.com.gh
