SIM Registration Exercise Extended for 5th Time
The Ministry of Communication and Digitalisation has again extended the deadline for the SIM Re-registration exercise to November 30, 2022.
This will be the fifth extension of the deadline after the March 31, July 31, September 30 and October 31 deadlines.
According to the Ministry, 30,011,082 have completed the first stage (Linking of Ghana Card to SIM Number), whereas 20,892,970 subscribers had completed the SIM card registration (linkage and biometric) as at 9th November 2022.
“One key reason why some of those who have linked phone numbers to Ghana cards have been unable to complete the bio capture of stage two is because they used other people’s cards to link their numbers.
“This includes vendors who used the cards of others without the knowledge or consent of the card owners. Their inability to complete phase two attests to the robustness of the authentication process designed into the sim registration architecture. It will flush out all fakes. You cannot use someone else’s Ghana card to register your sim,” the statement from the Ministry said.
It added that others with Ghana have deliberately refused to complete the exercise despite ample opportunity afforded all to do so.
As a sanction, the Ministry said, SIM cards which have undertaken the first stage without the second stage “will be blocked from accessing data services on November 20”.
Meanwhile, such SIMs will be completely deactivated on November 30.
The unavailability of the Ghana Card to the public has been cited among the reasons for the extensions of the deadlines by the Ministry of Communication.
The SIM registration exercise which began on October 1, 2021, was scheduled to end on March 31, 2022, however, the Minister extended the exercise to July 31.
At the end of July, the Minister “reluctantly” extended the exercise again to September 30 citing challenges in the registration exercise, challenges with the issuance of Ghana cards, etc.
Ahead of the September 30 deadline, the NCA instituted some punitive measures to compel the unregistered SIM users to undertake the exercise.
It included the blockage of outgoing calls and data services for 48 hours each week and the re-routing of outgoing calls to an Interactive Voice Recording (IVR) for a SIM registration sensitisation message.
Although this compelled some unregistered SIM users to register their cards, it was halted after it prompted a number of SIM users to sue the NCA.
In a press statement dated October 17 while the Ministry was extending the deadline for the fourth time to October 31 and branded it as a “moratorium”, said 28,959,006 SIM cards had been linked to Ghana cards while 18, 930,664 SIM cards had completed both stages of the registration exercise.
Almost 10 million SIM card users had completed the first stage but had refused to proceed with the second stage at the time.
The exercise has generally received public outrage due to its initially hectic process and the use of the Ghana card alone but the Ministry assured in its press statement on November 11 that it is in the best interest of the country.
“This exercise is not meant to make life difficult for subscribers, but to protect consumers and businesses. The priority of the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation has always been to ensure digital inclusion and to provide a secure environment for Ghanaians to access digital services. The Ministry has been working tirelessly on the development and implementation of policies to this effect.”
Source: opemsuo.com/Hajara Fuseini
