All biometric voters’ registration kits are brand new–EC insists

The Electoral Commission (EC) has insisted that the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits being used for the compilation of the voters’ register are all new.

It explained that as part of its procurement of a new Biometric Voter Management System, it bought 8500 Biometric Voter Registration kits and all of these kits had been deployed to the field.

The commission noted that the assertion by individuals that 40 per cent of the BVR kits being used were the old kits, was an outright lie.

A statement issued in Accra said the new kits were completely different from the old ones in terms of look, appearance and functionality and the new ones were smaller and had three handles while old had one.

“The new kits also had an ID number and QR Code and cannot be removed from the case while the old version had no ID number and was removable, additionally, the new kits can print out daily systems that made data collection easy and has charging points in the front with two led alerts light but the old one did not have such features.

“For the information of the public, all the kits being used for the voters’ registration exercise are brand new, there is not a single old absolute kit in the field and one would have thought that the individuals making the assertion would have indicated in the report where they saw the old kits being used,” the statement said.

The voters registration exercise, which began on June 30, and will end on August 6, is in its third phase, and taking place in more than 33,000 registration centres under a cluster system arrangement where a registration takes six days at each centre, with more than 4.5 million applicants been registered out of the targeted 15 million voters. -GNA