The Ashanti Regional Branch of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has hinted of plans to petition the Electoral Commission (EC) next week over the just ended re-registration exercise for deleted NHIS voters
This is because almost half of the number of people in the region whose names were deleted could not re-register after the ten day exercise ended last Thursday.
In an interview with Citi News, the Ashanti Regional Secretary, Sam Payne noted that “once the court has processed that Ghanaians 18 years and above qualified to be on the register should have their names in the register, He asked if it is “up to the EC to be telling us that they gave the 10 days and therefore they cannot put the names back on the register”?
He added that “it is an order by the Supreme Court and as such they should”.
Mr. Sam Payne added that there is about “56,000 plus people as suggested by the Electoral Commission and less than 23,000 have got their names back onto the register, this a matter for every Ghanaian to be concerned”.
The NPP in the Ashanti region had earlier called for an extension of time but at a press conference yesterday, the EC, stated it would not do so as it was not expecting all 56,000 deleted names to re-register.
In an interview with Citi news, the regional secretary, Sam Payne, expressed worry about the Electoral commission’s posture adding the party will still petition the EC over the issue just like the Member of Parliament for the Efutu Constituency in the Central Region, Alex Afenyo Markin did.
Background
On Tuesday, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Ashanti Region, raised concerns with the low registration rate and called on the EC to extend the period of re-registration after it indicated that 14,801 had re-registered as of Monday.
The Member of Parliament for the Efutu Constituency in the Central Region, Alex Afenyo Markin, also petitioned the Commission to extend the window of re-registration for NHIS card registrants by 10 days
The MP lamented that the exercise in his constituency has been fraught with power and logistical challenges which have prevented the EC from capturing as many names as possible.
The EC has said it will not extend the deadline for the re-registration exercise despite revealing that only 24, 287 of the deleted NHIS registrants, were re-registered during the 10-day exercise, as part of the voters’ register exhibition exercise.
-citifmonline