Registration Of Prisoners In Limbo wWth 48hrs To End Biometric Exercise

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Category: Elections & Governance

Created on Thursday, 03 May 2012 00:00

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Registration Of Prisoners In Limbo wWth 48hrs To End Biometric Exercise

With barely two days to end the biometric voter registration exercise, the fate of the nation’s prisoners is hanging in the balance.

It is unclear whether they would be allowed to exercise their franchise in December since they are yet to be registered.

The Electoral Commission in compliance with a Supreme Court ruling proposed to register the prisoners to enable them vote in December.

But the prison authorities rejected the proposal arguing that there was a problem with the true identification of the inmates.

The acting Public Relations Officer of the Electoral Commission, Christian Owusu Parry in an interview with Citi News said the prisoners will be registered when the Ghana Prisons Service authorities are able to establish their true identities.

“We indicated earlier on that we will register the prisoners during the fourth and final stages of the registration exercise, but consultation we had with the prison authorities have necessitated that we defer the registration of prisoners until a later date,” Mr. Parry said.

He added: “The prison authorities have indicated to us that they have difficulty establishing the true identity of some of the people in the prisons who want to register and that they will want a little more time in order to ascertain the true identities of this people before we are able to register them.”

Mr. Parry said as soon the EC is given the clearance, it will go ahead and register the prisoners to enable them exercise their franchise in December.

“We are waiting for them to give us the go ahead so that we will go into the prisons to register them; anytime they say that they have been able to resolve the issue of establishing the identities of the prisoners the commission will go into the prisons and register them,” he assured.

He also hinted that the EC has no intention of extending the biometric voter registration exercise despite calls by some political parties for an extension following the shortage of materials and the breakdown of equipment at some registration centres.

Meanwhile, the Prisons Public Relations Officer, ASP Courage Atsem, said the challenge of authenticating the true identity of the prisoners has still not been resolved.

“I must admit that the challenges that we have in respect to establishing the authentic identity of the inmates has still not been resolved,” he said.

He explained, “A joint committee made up of officials of the Electoral Commission as well as the Ghana Prisons Service has been put up to work out how best to come out with that challenge so it is not as if the Ghana Prisons Service has not allowed the Electoral Commission to register the prisoners.”

Source: Citifmonline.com