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Too much manual work accounted for high EC budget - CDD

The Commission had budgeted 1.1 million cedis for the polls, while 100 million Ghana cedis would be used for other administrative expenses.

Dr. Franklin Oduro, CDD

The Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has sought to justify the controversy surrounding the budget presented by the Electoral Commission’s for the 2016 Presidential and Parliamentary elections.

Parliament has approved 826.8 million Ghana cedis for the Electoral Commission for the conduct of presidential and parliamentary elections next year.

However, Parliament approved less than what the EC had planned for, leaving a funding gap of almost GHC400 million.

Deputy Director of CDD, Franklin Oduro has told Accra-based Joy FM,  the budget of the EC was high due to the manual process involved in the electoral process.

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He said the EC spends huge expenditure on logistics such as printing and distributing of ballot papers, which are manually done.

“I think overall it does appear that we may not be thinking, planning and spending with the mindset of value for money in the electoral process. We may be doing something we could do with less funding to achieve the same purpose,” he added.

Dr. Oduro further indicated that the EC must be provided with the necessary funding for the 2016 polls.

“We need to attach all the necessary importance and we need to provide all the necessary funding for our Electoral Commission to conduct free and fair elections especially in a political environment such as ours that is very polarized,” Dr. Oduro said.

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