Joe Anokye, NCA Director General
The National Communications Authority (NCA) has disclosed that there are 25,448,962 SIMs tied to about 13,982,557 unique Ghana Cards in Ghana. This is part of the journey of the national sim registration.
Addressing journalists in Accra yesterday, Director General of NCA, Joe Anokye, said the SIM subscribers have completed both stage one and stage two of the registration process to link their NIA Cards appropriately.
He pointed out that the figure is derived from the total active SIMs which at the inception of the exercise were with the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and Broadband Wireless Access (BWAs). This was 42,749,709 SIMS. He added that the active unregistered SIMS currently stands at 11,122,295.
These include exempted SIMs for Ghanaians on national duties outside Ghana, foreign diplomats, refugees, recalcitrant subscribers who have Ghana Cards but have refused to register, subscribers who have registered some but not all of their SIMs and subscribers who do not genuinely have Ghana Cards.
“The subscribers of these Unregistered Active SIMs have up to the end of May 2023, to complete their SIM Registration or have their SIMs deactivated from the network. The only exemptions will be for those I have just listed earlier,” he stated.
Mr Anokye said the subscribers who do not genuinely have Ghana Cards will have to prove that they do not have the cards to prevent their SIMs from being deactivated.
Breach
Meanwhile, Mr Joe Anokye has debunked claims that the SIM database has been breached. He noted that a team had been put in place to periodically audit the individual SIM registers held by the MNOs and BWAs to ensure they are consistent with the Central SIM Register.
He, therefore, cautioned that any MNO or BWA found to be in breach would be made to face the fullest force of the law.
The NCA Director General further explained that the limit of ten SIM registrations is for individual subscribers while corporate entities can register more than ten SIMs.
As a result, he said there was a need for all SIM registrations, shared with the Central SIM Register, to be properly classified as either business or individual.
Mr Anokye said as part of the monitoring processes, the NCA uncovered abuse and immediately directed all MNOs to discontinue using their legacy platform for registration.
In line with protecting the integrity of the SIM register, the NCA Director General has directed the MNOs to complete the classification or categorisation of all SIM ownership into either Individual or Business SIM.
This delinking, he indicated, will be done only at the customer care centres of the MNOs to ensure integrity and to ensure that only the right owners of SIMs are allowed to delink.
He added that it will also develop enterprise and web-based systems for businesses to check and delink SIMs that are no longer in use or are unwanted by the business.
In the coming days, he disclosed that the MNOs will introduce a system to enable subscribers to check the number and detail of SIMs registered to their respective Ghana Cards.
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