Head of Communications at the Electoral Commission (EC), Eric Kofi Dzakpasu has stated that the Commission have sufficient biometric voter devices for the conduct of the forthcoming December polls.The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) has raised concerns about the possibility of biometric devices malfunctioning on Election Day.
In a recent report after a monitoring the just ended nationwide voter verification exercise, CODEO disclosed that about 6% of exhibition centres had their devices malfunctioning.
But according to Mr Dzakpasu, because they have projected such shortcomings, the EC have procured over 78,000 biometric devices to serve the 29,000 polling stations across the country.
“We have acquired 78,000 biometric verification devices and every centre had a backup. We had backups at the regional offices and backups at the district offices. There were three technicians around the exhibition centres based at electoral area centres constantly monitoring these devices to fix them where possible in the event of any defect", he said on The Big Issue on Citi FM Saturday.
Mr. Dzakpasu said places that experienced defective biometric devices for the duration of the voter verification exercise were checked and those that required being changed were changed.Â
“We took remedial measures at places that experienced such defects so CODEO should have highlighted whether remedial measures were taken when these devices broke down and whether at the end of the day the exercise went on with devices at the various places. Actually, we anticipated that there could be some of these challenges so there was this contingency plan from day one,†he concluded.