New Voters’ Register: How EC plans to spend the GHS390m budget 

Parliament has approved a budget of over GHS 390 million for the Electoral Commission to conduct the voter registration exercise ahead of the 2020 national elections.

Documents sighted by Citi News show the amount will be expended on procurement, recruitment, training, data processing, publicity and allowances.

Over GHS161 million is expected to be spent on allowances of registration officials while the procurement of materials is expected to cost over GHS 156 million.

The overall budget approved for the Commission’s activities this year stands at GHS1.3 billion, down from GHS 1.8 billion approved in 2016.

The registration exercise is expected to span between April and May 2020 and run for 50 days.

The Commission has in an earlier interview insisted that it is being financially prudent with the decision to compile a new voters’ register following opposition to the decision by some political parties and analysts.

The Head of Communications at the Electoral Commission, Sylvia Annor in a Citi News interview said:

“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.

“Now the upgrade may cost us more. So if we make comparative analysis we can see that the Electoral Commission is being prudent with the management of the financial resources. The EC office has an open-door policy so if a group wants to meet the Electoral Commission, our doors are open,” Sylvia Annor added.

Source: citinewsroom.com