Expunge Minors From Register

THE INDEPENDENT People's Party (IPP) has called for a credible voters' register in the country which will ensure free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections in 2016.

Kwame Owusu Akyempim Boateng, General Secretary of IPP, therefore charged the Electoral Commission (EC) to immediately start working on the voter's register to make it clean and credible.

In this regard, he admonished the EC to quickly expunge minors who are below the voting age of 18 years, but have been registered under strange circumstances, from the national voters' register.

Akyempim Boateng also charged the EC to make sure that names and details of all foreigners who have also been registered in the country's voters' register be deleted.

He stated that minors and non-Ghanaians have no right to cast a ballot when Ghana goes to the polls next year.

Akyempim Boateng was speaking during a mammoth press conference held in Kumasi by his political party. The IPP used the press briefing to state its stance on the debate that had recently ensued over Ghana's voters' register.

He stated that changing the current voters' register is not the solution but what is needed now is for the EC to thoroughly clean the register to make it credible.

Akyempim Boateng was of the opinion that even if the voters' register is changed now, the prevailing circumstances would still make it feasible for foreigners and minors to find their way into the new one.

The IPP General Secretary insisted that the country needs a central data base system which would capture the details of all Ghanaians, including those who are eligible to vote, before the idea of a new voters' register should be considered.

Akyempim Boateng suggested that the cost of producing a new voters' register should be channeled into solving the energy crisis in the country.

The IPP Founder and Leader, Kofi Akpaloo, who was present at the press conference, re-echoed the need for a central data base system to be instituted in the country before a new voters' register is compiled.

He blamed the NPP for not taking the national identification exercise they started while in power seriously, saying that the issue of foreigners and minors in the voters' register would not have occurred had the NPP taken the exercise serious.

FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi