The Electoral Commission (EC) says it has procured the services of speed boats to help with the conveyance of electoral materials to the Dwarf Island and other hard-to-reach areas in the Afram Plains North and South Constituencies.
The commission again says the Ghana Air Force will assist in airlifting electoral materials to speed up collation of results from areas without good network connectivity.
In 2020 the EC struggled with network connectivity, a situation which delayed election results from the dwarf islands and other hard-to-reach areas for days.
Speaking to Channel One News on strategies to avoid recurrence, the Eastern Regional Director of the Commission, John Appiah Baffour said measures had been put in place to ensure a speedy collation.
“This time around, Afram Plains and North, we have made provisions so that we can get the results early. We have hired speedboats to retrieve the results. The Ghana Army is also helping with a chopper to airlift the materials and bring them back. So, we are hopeful that this time everything will move smoothly,” he stated.
Meanwhile, the two leading political parties say they have already piloted their systems, which will be used in collating results from the Afram Plains North and South Constituencies.
NDC’s Eastern Regional Youth Organiser Richard Etornam Nyarko: “When it comes to efficiency and transmission of results, yesterday, we piloted our results and I can tell you that even in Afram Plains, the people were fast in their transmission. We are sure that we are not going to delay. We are going to go many hours ahead of the EC and collate our results in real-time. Put it out there and declare President Mahama winning even before the EC.”
NPP’s Director of IT and Elections, Oteng Adu: “As a party, we put in an elaborate plan to get our pink sheets, and we had to test our systems. Afram Plains was one area we used. So, we are expecting that, based on the results collected in the test run, we will be able to put in the corrective measures. So, as a party, we are sure that we will be able to get our pink sheets on time.”
