Give us more logistics-Officers of national identification exercise

Front page
July 19, 2008

REGISTRATION officers of the national identification exercise at Kasoa in the Central Region have called for an increase in the logistics given to registration centres to speed up the registration process.
They said the one computer given to each registration centre to capture the data of individuals was woefully inadequate to cater for the large number of people who thronged the various registration centres every day.
Speaking in separate interviews with the Daily Graphic during a tour of the registration centres yesterday, the officers in charge of the process said if the situation remained the same, they would not be able finish registering the people in the town by the July 23, 2008 deadline.
Mr Justice Akrong, a registration officer, said he spent about 30 minutes to complete the registration process for one person, instead of 10 minutes, adding, “At the end of the day I register about 60 people.”
He said apart from some people not being able to provide some vital information about themselves, a situation which slowed down the process, the allocation of one computer to a centre was another factor, since the transfer of information from the register to the computer takes time.
He said 612 people had been registered so far, out of the 1,000 forms given to him since July 1, 2008.
Mr Akrong said since he was not able to complete the registration of many people in a day, some people went to the centre at midnight to form a queue.
“One man who said he came here at 1.00 a.m. said he was number 20 in the queue when he arrived here. People sleep here, just to be in the queue early,” he said, adding, “We don’t even have time to eat because of the large number of people.”
Another registration officer, Mr Stephen Frimpong-Manso, said he began work on Tuesday and had so far registered 293 people.
He said the slow pace of registration was a problem that needed to be addressed with the provision of more computers.
Mr Frimpong-Manso complained about accommodation, adding that he had been sleeping in a classroom, since he had nowhere to sleep.
Mr Lawrence Antwi, another registration officer, who also expressed concern over the slow pace of registration, said he had registered 937 persons as of 11.00 a.m. yesterday.
Meanwhile, residents of Kasoa have called for more registration officers and logistics to speed up the process of registration, since they wasted too much time in queues.
A resident, Mr Frederick Kpogo, said even though he had been going to the registration centre for the past three days, he had not been able to register because of the slow pace of the process.
Another resident, Mr Ernest Osei, said he had to visit the registration centre on three occasions at 4.00 a.m. before getting access to fill the registration form.
Mr Theophilus Armah called for more officers.
Large crowds of people had gathered at the registration centres at the time of the visit by the Daily Graphic.