WAEC dispatch more staff to assist in registration

Accra, May 6, GNA - The West African Examination Council (WAEC) has dispatched more staff to registration centres all over the country to assist in the processing of forms for the November-December 2005 Examinations.

Mrs Agnes Teye-Cudjoe, Senior Public Affairs Officer; told the GNA on Friday that extra staffs from other departments of WAEC were sent to such centres to help to speed up the process.

She expressed regret over the long queues that had been forming at the centres and blamed candidates for waiting until the deadline drew near.

She said WAEC started floating registration forms on March 29 taking into consideration when the salaries of Ghanaian workers were paid "but unfortunately candidates are still complaining about not having money on time to register".

She said some of the candidates also make mistakes so much time was spent on them, thus contributing to the long queues.

Mrs Teye-Cudjoe, therefore, advised potential candidates to prepare in advance by putting money aside to register and to submit the forms on time.

She emphasized that the deadline for submission was on Monday, May 9, 2005 while the exams would start between October 6 and October 29, 2005.

"However, I can not tell if it would be extended because I do not have any official directive as to whether it will be extended. Besides we organize our various examinations according to schedule so if we keep extending time for a programme, it will disturb the rest of our programmes and people will be complaining."

Mrs Teye-Cudjoe further advised candidates to personally submit forms for easy clarifications and necessary corrections.

On the on-line registration, she disclosed that more than 1,000 candidates had registered on-line and advised more candidates to do the same because it was cheaper, easier, faster and helped to reduce a lot of administrative work.

Candidates pay 30,000 cedis for the entry scratch card for the on-line registration while those who do the manual registration pay 60,000 cedis.

It is expected that more than 126,700 candidates would register for the examinations in October as private candidates.