CR MINISTER TOURS REGISTRATION CENTRES (PAGE 27)

The Central Regional Minister, Nana Ato Arthur, has stated that there might be the need for the extension of the deadline for the National Identification registration currently going on in the Central region.
The exercise, which started on July 1 on a pilot basis in the region, is expected to end by July 17.
After touring a number of registration centres in the Cape Coast Metropolis last Wednesday, Nana Arthur said even though the exercise was going on smoothly, a lot more needed to be done to ensure its success.
He said the exercise had challenges which needed to be addressed and called on personnel handling it to show more commitment and dedication to surmount the challenges.
He said, for instance, that there was the need to increase the personnel in some of the centres to make the exercise less cumbersome and reduce the time one has to spend at the centre to register.
He appealed to the people to exercise patience with the registration officials and cooperate with them in view of the challenges the exercise had imposed on the staff.
The regional minister stressed the need to sensitise the people to the importance of the exercise to reduce the frustration they went through at the registration centres.
He suggested to the registration officials to sacrifice to work on Sundays and also make special arrangements with school authorities to have their pupils and students registered.
Problems that came out during the visit ranged from lack of forms, confusion over queuing, lack of co-ordination between the registration officials and the camera operators and communication gap between some registration supervisors.
At most of the centres visited, officials complained of lack of forms, and impatience on the part of people who turned up for registration, among others.
At the time the regional minister got to the University Primary School registration centre around 11.30 a.m. there were no registration forms and people had queued since morning waiting to be registered.
It was also learnt that some people filled the forms on their own and made a lot of mistakes, which needed to be corrected, whilst others who also filled the forms previously did not turn up for their photographs to be taken.
At the Castle registration centre, Ms Gifty Tetteh told the regional minister that she had made arrangements to register staff of the Ghana Commercial Bank after church service on Sunday.
Nana Arthur, who was not satisfied with some of the explanations given by the registration personnel, advised them be up and doing and that anyone found to have been drawing back the excise would be replaced immediately.
At the Old High Court building near the Pitmans Secretariat School in Cape Coast, an 85 year-old lady who did not see why she should join a queue to be registered walked away, saying “no one would ask me for an identification card at the cemetery”.