Final year SHS students returned for voters registration, not WASSCE – NDC

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has claimed that the Akufo-Addo led government decision for final year Senior High School (SHS) students to return to school was for voters registration and not the 2020 WASSCE for school examination.

The National Democratic Congress Director of Elections, Mr. Elvis Afriyie Ankrah at a press briefing on Saturday, July 12 alledged that the decision goes contrary to the law which mandates the Electoral Commission to gazette a designated polling centre for 21 days.

“We (the NDC) remind the Electoral Commission that as per C.I. 91 they are required to gazette a designated polling centre for 21 days. In the absence of that, any so-called registration centre, be it in a school or elsewhere is illegal,” he said.

“It is true that the EC was quick to refer to their mandate as prescribed by CI 91 but they conveniently left out portions of the same CI that compels them to gazette for a defined number of days.

“We refer you, ladies and gentlemen to Regulation 2, Paragraph 3 of the CI 91: “The Commission shall at least twenty-one days before the first day of the national registration of voters, inform political parties and the general public by publication in the Gazette of a place it designates as a registration centre”, Mr. Elvis Afriyie Ankrah added.

The Director of Elections furthered that it’s unfair to permit Electoral Commission officials, Security personnel, and Political Parties agents to move freely in the over 170 schools across the country while parents are not allowed to do so.

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He said many groups, stakeholders, Civil Society Organisations, and health experts had already suggested for the government against reopening of schools but the government still went ahead because of the “the hope of winning the election at all cost”.

Meanwhile, Meanwhile, the spokesperson of GES, Cassandra Twum Ampofo in the statement copied to Georgeweb.org said the conduct of the voters registration exercise in SHS/TVET schools across the country for eligible students by the Electoral Commission (EC) was upon the request of the Ghana Education Service (GES).

Source: Georgeweb.org