Parliament approves EC’s GHS390m budget for voter registration exercise
- The Electoral Commission says it will not be dictated to on how to go about its business
- The body in charge of elections in Ghana says it will work with its own laid down plans and programmes ahead of this year’s elections
- Meanwhile, the EC's budget of GHS390 million has been approved by parliament
- Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in
Ghana’s Parliament has approved the over GHS 390 million budget the Electoral Commission needs to compile the new voters' register ahead of the polls in December 2020.
According to Citi News, documents in their possession indicate that the EC’s budget will be spent on procurement, recruitment, training, data processing, publicity and allowances.
The EC’s head of communications, Sylvia Annor said the Commission has provided enough evidence and defense to support their claims for the budget.
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“The Electoral Commission has given certain figures to back the argument that we are raising. When we are talking about cost, in 2017, during the limited registration exercise, we spent GHC 487,980,714. Now the 2020 registration is expected to cost GHC 390, 265, 486 which is even cheaper than the limited registration conducted in 2016. And when you talk about the obsolete nature of the system, we spent 2 million ghana cedis to refurbish the old system and the vendor indicated in the report that going forward, we either need to acquire a new system and the upgrade was going to cost us more,” she said.
The break down of the GHS 390 million budget is as follows;
Parliament approved GHS1.3 billion for the Electoral Commissions activities fro the year, as compared to the GHS 1.8 billion approved in 2016.
Also more than GHS161 million will be spent on official who will undertake the registration exercise as allowance and GHS 156 million is expected to be the cost of procurement materials.
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The EC’s decision to compile a new voters' register for the 2020 elections has faced opposition from the biggest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress(NDC).
But 13 other political parties forming the coalition of political parties have supported and backed the EC to undertake the exercise and also urged the NDC to support the electoral body achieve and free and clean register for the polls.
YEN.com.gh earlier reported that 13 political parties have endorsed the Electoral Commission’s decision to put together a new voters' register ahead of the polls in December 2020.
According to the 13 political parties, the EC has made a good case for their decision to compile a new register.
Source: YEN.com.gh
