by Austin Brakopowers
Angry residents surrounded the Electoral Commission (EC)’s office in Cape Coast on Monday threatening to halt the on-going exercise to re-register National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) registrants whose names were deleted.
The exercise, which commenced on Monday, is to enable NHIS registrants whose names were expunged from the electoral roll in accordance with a court order to be re-registered.
The angry mob accused the EC of scheming to disenfranchise them by deleting their names as part of NHIS registrants even when they never registered with the NHIS cards in 2012.
They demanded answers from the regional officials.
The EC has rolled out the voters’ exhibition exercise alongside the re-registration of deleted NHIS registrants Monday, July 18.
Re-registration of deleted NHIS registrants follows a Supreme Court (SC)’s ruling in a suit filed by a former National Youth Organiser of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Abu Ramadan and Evans Nimako in which they challenged the credibility of the electoral roll.
The SC on May 5 ordered the EC to delete NHIS registrants following its earlier ruling in 2014 and directed an opportunity be given to affected persons to re-register to take part in the coming election.
In compliance, the EC deleted 56,772 NHIS registrants and slated Monday, July 18 to 28 for the re-registration.
The Commission later entreated persons who registered with the NHIS card in 2012 to visit their district offices to check their names for re-registration.
But barely a day after the Commission commenced the re-registration exercise; some residents of Cape Coast in the Central Region are accusing the EC of a deliberate attempt to deny them their voting right in the coming election.
The EC has denied the claim saying it worked with the data given it by the various district offices.
It maintains persons with such concerns should visit the district offices of the Commission to be verified using the EC’s Form One (A).
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