Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Register Anywhere-NIA tells Ghanaians

Page 1 Lead
22-07-08

THE National Identification Authority (NIA) has explained that the rotation of the registration exercise through the 10 regions of Ghana does not limit the exercise to residents of any particular region at any particular time.
Faced with the reality in the Central Region that thousands of residents there would not have been covered by the time the exercise ends there tomorrow, the NIA said anybody living anywhere in Ghana could go and register wherever the exercise moved to.
Ms Bertha Dzeble, the Head of the Information Department of the NIA, told the Daily Graphic yesterday that the registration exercise was neither bound by time nor geographical boundaries.
She said people who were not able to register could still go ahead and register outside their locality, adding that the ongoing exercise in the Central Region, which would be replicated in the other regions, was to bring the exercise closer to the doorstep of the people.
“People can register anywhere, anytime at their own convenience,” she told the Daily Graphic in an interview.
She was reacting to calls by residents of Kasoa in the Central Region for an extension of the deadline of the registration exercise in the region to enable those who had not been able to register to do so.
They said with the exercise ending in the region tomorrow, many of the people were yet to register, hence the need to extend the deadline.
On the issue of logistics, she said, “We have registration materials to cover the whole exercise,” and urged registration officers who had ran out of stock to contact their district supervisors.
Registration officers of the national identification exercise at Kasoa had called for an increase in the logistics given to registration centres to speed up the registration process.
Ms Dzeble said the NIA had officers who went round the various centres to ensure that the right thing was done and the centres had all the necessary materials.
She said the exercise was free and urged members of the public, especially the media, to expose anyone said to be collecting money from people before registering them, explaining that although no one had gone to the offices of the NIA to make a formal complaint about the issue of payment of money before registration, she had heard of it in sections of the media.
Ms Dzeble called on people in communities where the registration exercise was taking place to ensure that they followed the process.
“We want people to ensure that there is a process that must be followed,” she emphasised.
She noted that the number of registration centres in any community where the exercise took place was based on the estimated population of that community, adding that the number was based on the data from the National Population Census and the Electoral Commission.
“What is happening at Kasoa appears to be in Kasoa alone,” she said, saying that reports from registration centres around Cape Coast showed that as of 3.00 p.m. last Saturday those centres did not have anybody in a queue.
She said those in charge of registration in those areas had been made to undertake mobile registration by going to hospitals, senior high schools, prisons, among other places.
Ms Dzeble wondered why some people could sleep at registration centres in order to be at the beginning of queues to register and indicated that from a pilot conducted, up to about 100 people could be registered in a day.

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