NORSAC To Facilitate Registration Exercise

The Northern Sector Action on Awareness Centre (NORSAAC) is to facilitate and encourage 700 first-time eligible voters in the Tolon-Kumbungu and Gushiegu districts and the Tamale metropolis in the Northern Region to successfully go through the nationwide biometric registration exercise.

The move is part of a one-year project dubbed, “Strengthening Advocacy for Peaceful Elections”, aimed at supporting stakeholders in the exercise and the entire electioneering to encourage people to register and vote to promote peaceful elections.

The project is being jointly implemented by NORSAAC and STAR Ghana, both non-governmental organisations.

The Director of NORSAAC, Mr Alhassan Awal, made this known at a day’s training workshop on the biometric registration in Tamale for civil society organisations (CSOs) in the region.

The workshop was aimed at, among other objectives, equipping members with the needed knowledge on the biometric process.

Mr. Awal urged the CSOs to make the biometric process an integral part of their interventions.

He announced that NORSAAC, with support from its partners, had designed 1,600 posters to create awareness of the process.

The Master Trainer of Super Lock Technologies Limited, providers of the biometric software, Mr Shishi Adam, said the biometric process had been tried and tested and found to be good for Ghana's democratic process.

He stated that the system was designed to prevent any form of cheating, including deletion of voters’ data and multiple voting.

Some of the participants were, however, skeptical about the process and urged the Electoral Commission (EC), the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) and the Information Services Department to intensify public education on the exercise.

They equally cautioned the EC against over confidence in the system in order not to gloss over potential challenges that were likely to be recorded in the registration.