Annual report on the Gold Coast / Colonial Office.

  • Colonial Office
Date:
[1951]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on the Gold Coast / Colonial Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    108/130 (page 102)
    duties. Some 45 per cent of those worked full time and were given supervision over groups of 10 to 20 sub-Districts. The whole process of registration was completed on 19th January, 1951. Not only had it been necessary to allow a period for the hearing and listing of objec¬ tions etc., but the actual collection of names and the explanation of the purpose of the registration itself was a task involving much work within a strictly limited timetable. Assistant Registration Officers were carefully briefed by the Registration Officers concerned. The Registration Officers held large numbers of meetings in towns and villages, with the full co-operation of State Councils and Native Authorites, and the information was widely spread by local customary means. Furthermore 77,000 copies of a simple pamphlet in English were printed by the Government Press, and 280,000 copies of a sum¬ mary of this leaflet were printed in English and in eight vernaculars. Almost all local daily newspapers printed the text of the pamphlet in serial form, the insertions being paid for by Government at commercial advertising rates. The Public Relations Department made its wired broadcasting services fully available and extensive broadcasts were made of the vernacular texts. Finally, 15 mobile information teams, selected and trained by the Public Relations Department with the assistance of the Mass Education Branch of the Department of Social Welfare, toured Ashanti, the Colony and Southern Togoland. The teams of two men each (in two cases the officers concerned were women) covered approximately two rural districts each, and went over a prepared itinerary twice. In practice it was found that the teams were not always able to reach places away from the main roads and did not always have time to win popular confidence in places where initial misunderstanding was met with, or where the teams had little detailed local knowledge. When the registration was complete it was found that only some 40 per cent of those people believed to be qualified to register had actually done so. Registration was uneven and it is felt that this was mainly due to the novelty of the idea, but many other causes contributed to it ; in some places the suspicion became established that registration was a prelude to military conscription (at a time when United Nations forces were suffering reverses in Korea), or that it was a prelude to more taxation, or that it was connected with the cutting out of diseased cocoa trees (many of the Assistant Registration Officers were in fact officers of the Cocoa Rehabilitation Department). Again the quali¬ fication that to be a voter one must be a ratepayer led to many dis¬ qualifications particularly in areas where owing to local disputes or for other reasons few people had paid their rates. Nevertheless, despite difficulties of this sort, registration, which speeded up greatly in the last few days of the time allotted, was duly completed, all claims etc., heard and electoral lists drawn up. Preparation for the elections While registration was proceeding preparations were being made for the elections themselves ; at first these were little publicised, in