SACK UNDP - SAYS NDC SECRETARY

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Monday, 09 November 2015

A Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), George Lawson, wants the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) out of the country.

According to him, the UNDP officials are interfering in Ghana’s internal affairs - meddling in local issues - and must not be countenanced since according to him, it could trigger conflict.

UNDP’s crime was that it had tasked a group to look into Ghana’s voter register through the Electoral Commission’s (EC’s) initiative, which eventually indicted it (EC) and Superlock Technology Limited (STL) over the handling of the biometric voter register (BVR) used in the 2012 general elections.

According to a UNDP report, STL, the controversial Israeli company contracted by the EC to assist in the management of the biometric database used for the 2012 general elections, still controls the sensitive data.

IT Department

“The management of biometric database has been outsourced to STL who was expected to train and fully hand over the system to the IT Department of the EC before the 2012 elections. STL   has not respected this component of the contract as at this assessment in August 2015,” the report, compiled by two researchers, revealed.

The document, which the UNDP calls ‘An Institutional Assessment Report,’ titled:  “Conduct of an Institutional Assessment and the Development a Strategic Plan for the Electoral Commission of Ghana,” was compiled by Islam Yusufi and Theophilus Dowetin.

Conducted between July and August 2015, it provides institutional assessment of the EC, looking at the Commission in the execution of its mandate as the electoral management body of Ghana.

Mr. Lawson, reacting to the damning report said, “That report should not be taken; it is not credible.” He claimed the UNDP concluded the report without talking to management of the EC.

“The contract was signed between STL and EC. For the researchers to limit themselves to engaging the IT department of EC and not the management of EC exposes their ignorance,” he told Joy FM in Accra.

He claimed the posture of the UNDP-sponsored research was akin to what the institution did in war-torn Iraq and Syria, accusing them of spreading “false information."

Mr. Lawson said he feared a similar thing is being orchestrated by the UNDP and its agents here in Ghana.

He asked the organization to either stay quiet or better still, leave the country, and in peace.

In the ensuing confusion, opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) Director of Elections, Martin Adjei-Mensah Korsah, has asked the EC to abrogate the contract it signed with STL.

He told Citi FM in Accra that STL was trying to “monopolize” the voter register database and had thus “rendered the EC’s IT department dormant because without STL they can’t function,” and called on the EC to “take every possible step to cut ties with the company.”

“In whose interest is the continuous stay of STL serving? How did STL even end up getting this contract from the Commission and how has their work been? So I think it’s a damning report,” he noted.

 “We hope that moving on into 2016, to what extent does all of these outlined here affect the delivery of credible, fair and acceptable election? We need to check some of these things, answer them properly before we move on into the next election to ensure greater acceptability of the process and its outcome towards 2016,”he asserted.

Mr. Korsah opined, “I think that this company should completely move away from our elections. The track record so far is even one that no one can be proud about. Before STL came, some of us doubted what their real expertise of competence was in the area that they are venturing. What they have left us with is nothing to write home about. And I think that they have to completely move away from our elections. Their delivery is poor; they seem to have gotten to all kinds of business interests and I don’t think that they have time to even deliver.”