Presiding Officers call for more education on Assembly election

Presiding Officers at polling stations in
the Ga East District, on Thursday called for more education and
publicity on the District and Unit Level Elections to improve voter
turn-out in the ongoing nationwide polls.
Mr Alex Laryea, Presiding Officer at the IBM Primary School
polling station in the Ga-East District, said the voter apathy was due
to previous postponements as well as lack of adequate publicity for
the election.
He said the Electoral Commission should have a fixed date for
the elections as well as ensured that all materials were made ready
before the date in order to avoid any postponements.
Mr Laryea said one problem they faced was that there were no
representatives of the Unit Committee contestants at the polling
stations and most of the voters did not know the contestants thus
the call for more publicity.
Mr Laryea also suggested that more powers should be vested in
the district assemblies by allocating more funds to them for
development projects.
The public, he added, should also be educated so that they could
interact more with their assembly men and women as they were more
available to the people than the Members of Parliament.
Mr Anthonio Andreas, Chairman for a group known as the
Concerned Civic Coalition, a non-governmental organization,
bemoaned the low turn-out, adding that if possible, unit committee
election should be separated from the district assembly election.
This, he said, would ensure grassroots participation in governance.
Mr Francis Agyei Addo, Presiding Officer at the Christ the
Savior Preparatory School Polling Station also stressed the need for
more education on the elections.
As 1700 hours the close of polls, only 36 out of the 1,033
registered voters at the Church of Pentecost (Bethel) Polling Station
had voted.
At the IBM Polling Station about 75 people had voted out of a
total of 1,177 registered voters with only 66 out of the 706 voters
registered at the Christ the Savior Preparatory School Polling Station
had voted.
GNA