SIM Registration Starts Today
The Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card registration starts today, October 1, 2021, Communication and Digitisation Minister, Mrs. Ursula Ekuful, announced on Sunday, September 5, 2021, during her turn at the Minister’s Press Briefing.
The initiative which has tasted several failed attempts will reduce or eliminate fraudulent and criminal activities, help authorities ascertain the accurate number of valid and accurate SIMs on the networks, enable operators to build better demographics of their customer base, and help them develop products and services to suit the various groupings when done properly this time around.
Subscribers are required to provide the name and residential or occupational address, date of birth, in the case of an individual; and Certificate of Incorporation, in the case of a body corporate; or registration, in the case of a partnership or an unincorporated body of persons; and an identification document.
Only the National Identity Card (Ghana Card) issued to an individual shall be used for the registration of SIM cards of Citizens, Foreign Residents, and Foreigners staying in Ghana for more than 90 days.
Mrs. Ekuful disclosed that data from the registration exercise will be stored in a Central SIM Registry at the National Information Technology Agency with restricted access to the database. She added that registration details will be accessed upon receipt of a court order to aid law enforcement agencies to prevent, detect, investigate, and prosecute fraud and other criminal activities and to aid emergencies and National Security matters such as terrorist attacks, national disasters, and public health emergency.
Persons 15 years and above are eligible for the SIM registration.
Also, citizens have the privileged to register a total of 10 SIMs across all networks while foreigners have the privilege of 3. The exercise will last for 6months which means, it ends on March 31st, 2022 after which Persons who fail to do so will have their SIMs disconnected.
How to register
The registration is in two folds. The first stage encompasses linking your SIM to your Ghana Card through Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) which will be done with a mobile phone. The steps in the first stage include:
Dial *404#
Enter your Ghana Card PIN
Confirm Ghana card PIN
Enter surname
Enter the first name
Enter date of birth
Select gender or sex
Confirm details
Submit details provided after confirmation
A unique code will be given when stage one is done successfully. Three attempts will be given to a subscriber to answer security questions when the first stage fails as a result of wrong details. However if unsuccessful as a result of failure at the National Identification Authority (NIA), the subscriber will be informed to contact NIA.
Subscribers will then visit their Service Providers, either through an agent or customer care to complete the second stage of the registration.
New subscribers are required to provide their Ghana Card for a new SIM card.
Source: opemsuo.com/Hajara Fuseini
