Madam Jean Adukwei Mensa, Electoral Commissioner of Ghana has said the Commission under her watch has saved the country a substantial amount of USD 90 million as the cost of conducting elections.
She said this was achieved because the Commission has employed competitive tendering as its method of procurement which yielded value for money.
She made these revelations at a press briefing in Accra ahead of the 2024 voter registration exercise to get first-time voters on the roster.
“It is not a wonder that we managed to lower the cost of our elections from $13 per in 2016 to $7.70 cents in 2020 and saved our nation a substantial amount of USD 90 million” she touted.
According to the Commissioner, approximately 95% of their procurement since 2020 have been advertised in local newspapers which has injected competition and reduced prices for the procurement of materials.
Madam Mensa said the Commission is poised for free and fair elections, considering the measures put in place.
The Electoral Commissioner said all gazetted registration centers and the movement plan for its mobile team have been made available on the Commission’s website.
According to her, this information makes political parties plan and prepare their party agents to observe the voter registration exercise.
“The Commission has always maintained that any interested third party should at the click of a button be able to know the number of registered voters per day nationwide. This is because we have provided them with adequate information that allows them to monitor, and observe the exercise. In addition to that we are confident that the observers take a record of a person who comes through to register daily.
She added that they expect to exceed their target of registering 623,000 new voters as they exceed their expectations in the 2023 voter ID card registration.
“We have no doubt that with these arrangements in place, we would exceed our target of 623,000 new registrants this time around,” she said.
The exercise according to the EC would last for 21 days including weekends.
To ensure transparency among EC officials and political agents from the start of day and end of day report generated by the registration kits will be made available to party agents.
“The registration kits can print the start of day and end of day report and copies of these are available to the agents of these political parties therefore any political party. If they are interested, they should know the number of persons who have registered on any given day”. She alluded.
As part of efforts to ensure peaceful, credible, and transparent elections, the commissioner said they have recruited returning officers and deputy returning officers for its 268 district offices nationwide.
Debunking the allegations of receiving the names of returning officers from District Chief Executives the EC said: “For the first time in our history we have created a database for these officers and we can now identify them by their names, photographs, Ghana cards, voter ID card, and residential addresses.”
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM/Abdul Rahman Umar
