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The Ashanti Regional Police Command has served notice to clamp down on motorcycles in Kumasi in a special exercise ahead of Friday�s polls. Regional Police Commander DCOP Augustine Gyening said the law enforcement officers were ready to seize both licensed and unlicensed motorcycles found on the streets of the city, starting from Wednesday to Friday. According to him, the move formed part of security arrangements to counteract the activities of persons who had planned to engage in the snatching of ballot boxes with motorcycles. It was also in response to concerns raised by the local residents and political parties. The police commander, who is the chairman of the Ashanti regional Election Security Taskforce (EST), warned that any person or groups of persons who dared the security officers would be ruthlessly dealt with. Speaking at a meeting with political parties and media personnel in Kumasi yesterday, DCOP Gyening said the police patrol team would continue to do its work alongside other officers assigned for poll duties. �We will not allow anyone to pick ballot boxes. Anyone who dares us in this election will be dealt ruthlessly with,� he warned. He stated that the EST had done a good job so far to ensure a peaceful atmosphere in the region, adding that the security officers wanted to do a better job for the days ahead. However, the Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Fredrick Fredua Anto, who was at the meeting, said the police needed to go beyond the assurances and rhetorics. According to him, recent history and experience from the biometric registration exercise gave the NPP cause for worry as the party always tended to suffer. Mr. Anto said the party had intelligence of clandestine activities by members of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) to cause unnecessary apprehension in voters in the area as part of a grand scheme to put fear in them, in order to reduce the voter turnout in the region. He rejected suggestions by the security capos that it was an offence for any person to stay around the polling centres after voting and challenged them to point out the law that frowned on that. However, the Regional Security Coordinator, Bempong Marfo, pleaded with the political parties not to ask their supporters to congregate around the polling centres since such a move would create security challenges for them. He also appealed to radio stations in the metropolis to record their programmes for security officers to fall on them for investigation, whenever there was crisis at their respective stations.