Public unwilling to provide records of dead relatives

The public's unwillingness to provide records or evidence of dead relations is hampering attempts by the Electoral Commission (EC) to expunge such records from the voters register in the Hohoe Municipality.      Only the Volta Cinema Palace Exhibition Centre at Hohoe-Zongo, one out of nine exhibition centres for the Municipality the Ghana News Agency visited between 8 am and 10.45 am on Thursday recorded names of 12 dead people from the electoral roll.      Exhibition Officials at the other centres indicated that the demand for proof by either voter's identity card, obituary or death certificates seemed too gruelling for family members, hence their uncooperative attitudes.      They alleged that many people were willing to assist but the extra information appears to be putting them off.      It was observed that the tempo of the exhibition exercise was picking up as figures collated by the GNA shows that many eligible voters have undergone checks at the various centres.      At the Roman Catholic Primary centre, Ms Georgina Onugah said 127 prospective voters visited to check their eligibility from a list of 986, since the exercise began on Sunday.      She said eleven people checked their cards as at 10.30am on Thursday.      Mr Richard Atiseh, Official at the Saint Teresa's Demonstration Primary said 102 voters out of 1,777 eligible voters had verified their names with eight filling forms to correct their names and ages.      At the E. P. Junior High School centre, Mr Wilberforce Drai said 249 voters out of 1,828 visited the centre.      He said there were no dead entry, no 18-year category, one disable, and eight name corrections with the majority of the voters having no problems.      Mr David Acheampong, Hohoe Municipal Officer of EC said Hohoe-North and Hohoe-South Constituencies have provisional eligible voters totalling 63,663 and 31,971 respectively, with the exhibition exercise being undertaken in 106 and 66 centres.      He said on display are three voters registers for verification by eligible voters, the 2004-2006 register and the current register.      Mr Acheampong appealed to the general public to volunteer information that would assist the EC to present a credible register for the general election in December. GNA