BY: Lambert Coffie | Voltaonlinegh.com |

Voting in the 2019 District level Elections (DLEs) is underway across all 18 municipalities and districts of the Volta region with a total of 1,482 and 2,998 candidates contesting the assembly membership and Unit committees’ elections respectively.

The process which runs from 7:00am to 5:00pm would see the election of one assembly member and five Unit committee members for each of the electoral areas in the various districts in the region.

According to statistics from the Regional Directorate of the Electoral Commission, only 88 women are in the assembly contests while that of the Unit committees had just 332 female aspirants.

Similarly, 18 Persons with Disability are in the in the assembly contests as against the 15 in the unit committee elections.

Out of the 18 the MMDAs in the region, the Ho West district has the highest of 10 female assembly aspirants with South Dayi having as much as 38 female candidates in the Unit committees’ elections.

 However, the Ketu South municipality has the highest number of candidates for both the Assembly and Unit Committee elections, with 159 and 358 candidates respectively.

Monitoring

Meanwhile, a tour of some polling centres in the Ho municipality by Volta Online revealed voting has been smooth so far but with low enthusiasm on the part of electorates.

For instance, at the STC Terminal voting centre in the Toviadzi Electoral Area, where there are three polling stations, only 181 persons out of a total of 2,235 registered voters have voted as of 10:30am.

The situation was  not different at the ‘Ho Bankoe L/A JSS’ polling stations ‘A’ and ‘B’, as only 52 out of a total of 1,141 voters cast their ballots  by 10:45am.

Similarly, 17 out of 656 persons voted at the Ho Bankoe E.P Primary School, while 19 out of 333 voters also cast their votes at the Ho High Court polling station as of 11:00am.

Voting however at the ‘Ho Poly Primary’ polling centre at the Ho Technical University campus delayed for a while due to the siting of the voting centre at a different location rather than the usual place. The process later begun at about 8:30am after the relocation.

Throughout the tour, Volta Online noticed the presence of security personnel and agents of candidates at the various voting centres visited.

Source: www.voltaonlinegh.com