Ghana's Biometric Registration of Voters

Last Saturday, I stood in a queue for 2 hours 45 minutes just to get my biometric voting card. This year, Ghana wants to use the biometric method for the general elections which will be held on 7th December 2012 so anyone from age 18 and above should endeavour to register as a voter. When the current government was in opposition, they kicked against the biometric registration. Ironically they had a change of mind when coming into office and decided to implement it. However with every new thing, brings its challenges and on Saturday, did they have their challenges!
I arrived at the registration centre which thankfully was just 5 minutes walk from me. I overheard the Registration Officer, tell someone that around 11am, the machine's battery "died" and they had to wait for 2 hours before someone brought them a spare from Head office. I shook my head in amazement. As if that wasn't bad enough, the officer responsible for keying-in the bio data of each registrant seriously needed to have had a 4 week course in keyboarding! His handling of the computer keyboard showed how unfamiliar he was with it, and his slow tying (with just 2 fingers) slowed down the whole process. I wondered if these people were serious!

Typically the registration centre opens at 7am and closes at 6am however, the officers began to educate us on  how the timing that had been announced on both the radio and television announcements, were incorrect. The centres were to close to the public at 5pm in order for them to count the number of registrants as well as write their operational reports etc. What irked me even further was their insensitivity on allowing 9 of us who had been there for over 2 hours to just register, especially as it was 5pm as the lack of a spare battery had attributed to the snail pace of the registration.

The registration officer made the mistake of bellowing out loud that it was 5pm and that we should all go home. Now anyone who knows me would tell you I am not the sort to start an argument or quarrel but honestly my tolerance at the whole display of their lackadaisical attitude set me off. I shouted back saying we will not go home until we had been processed. She looked at me in surprise as I had been well behaved throughout the time I was standing in the queue. I then repeated my response and she looked back at the officer who was filling out the forms and chuckled. In local parlance she told her colleague, she was shocked at how I had said we were not going to go home, until we had been processed. So in return the officer filling out the forms said she had seen me standing in the queue all this while and she thought I really did deserve being processed. So the 9 of us were all allowed to go through the process and indeed we got our cards. The rest of the people who had queued up behind me were told to return the following day. I certainly was not going to give up until I had gotten my Voters ID and in the end I did. For a simple process, they had made it complicated. In my view, they need to do the following:

• have move than one person assisting with the form filling
• have a more competent person on the computer
• when there is a backlog of persons in the queue, the other officers should assist instead of sitting around doing nothing.

I really do hope they get a greater part of the population to register, as this exercise would then have been a waste of taxpayers money.

In Remembrance of Trayvon Martin

I was saddened by the breaking news headline story of the 17 year old, Trayvon Martin who was shot by a man who felt threatened by him. A young teen holding a packet of Skittles and a bottle of Iced Tea, dressed in a hoodie looked threatening to grown up man? What on earth is this world coming to?
Many times and in different cities, I have had a group of 4 to 6 chaps who practically took up the entire side walk or road I was walking on but I didn't draw out a gun and shoot! This law in Florida, Stand your Ground, is the most preposterous thing I have heard about.  It practically gives vigilantes and other radicals, the permission to draw out a gun or other weapon anytime they feel threatened.
We are still to hear all the facts on this matter, but the fact that the young teen lay for 3 days on a slab without the police making with his parents is just incredulous! When is the senseless killing going to end? And when are tougher laws on gun control going to be made?
My son and I wore our hoodies as a sign of respect for youn Trayvon Martin. I do hope, justice will be served and expedited quickly.
RIP Trayvon Martin.

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Poor Customer Service

If you have a problem, it seems no-one but the person you first spoke to about it, is the only one who can help. What do I mean? Well here is my story. I went to the bank to collect some money sent to me via Western Union. Somewhere between the bank and where I went, I misplaced my voters identification card.
Luckily for me, I still have the Western Union receipt slip which has the details for my Voters Identification card. So I went to the bank and met a banking officer who told me she could help. She told me once I had the receipt, she would be able to retrieve my picture and details from their database. I was pleased and promised to come back the following day.
I did go back but unfortunately, the officer was not there. She had not gone to work that day so I asked if another officer could give me some assistance. I was told there was no-one else, except for that lady so I had to come back another time.
You can imagine how I felt. Why should one person be in charge of something that could be retrieved by anyone who had access to the database. I looked around the branch and something struck me as quite odd; I saw 3 customers sitting at different points of the banking hall had been waiting for a while for their respective  officers to report back to them. It seemed like it was taking forever and felt like the various officers had "disappeared" at the same time. Two of the poor chaps were tapping their feet and the third had bent his head and was staring at the floor. I felt sorry for them and then later that emotion vanished. Perhaps if they had been a bit more assertive, the would have been seen to by now....or then again I may be mistaking.

Generally in Ghana, customer service hardly exists and for me if you are providing a service, you have to really cater for all your customers in a manner that will make them return again and again. Every now and again, you meet a bright "star" who makes you smile or nod your head in agreement that the way they looked after you at your dinner table, or at the car wash, was special. However that is rare and there is so much room for improvement amongst those who provide services/products.

I hope I can write another piece about having received great customer service soon.