A committee set up by the Parliament of Ghana to investigate the recent district level and unit committee elections has presented its report to the house, containing a number of recommendations.
As part of the recommendations, the committee suggested that the country’s electoral body, Electoral Commission (EC), should have a fixed date for conducting the district assembly elections, as it is with the presidential and parliamentary elections.
The December elections were faced with enormous shortage of electoral materials and suffered other challenges, with election watchers describing the exercise as the worst in decades.
This prompted the recall of Members of Parliament from recess on January 18, where an ad-hoc committee was set up to probe the whole exercise.
A twenty-member committee, ten each from the majority and the minority, were tasked to investigate the problems associated with the elections and recommend how to avert those problems in future elections in order to build confidence in the electoral system.
The chairman of the committee Dominic Azumah presented the committee’s report to Parliament on Monday.
The report identified funding as a major cause of flaws encountered by the EC during the elections.
It, therefore, advocated for an Election Fund to cater for election activities.
The report also recommended that it should be mandatory for government institutions that release their vehicles and other materials to support the EC during parliamentary and presidential elections to extend the same gesture to the commission in the district level elections.
A special court, the report suggested, should be established to adjudicate electoral disputes.
Among others, the committee also noted that the conditions of service for electoral officials are not encouraging and recommended that something should be done about it.
Story by Isaac Essel/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana.
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