Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communications and Digitalisation
Government, through the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation, yesterday announced an extension of the SIM card re-registration to September 30, 2022.
Addressing the media at the Ministry of Information in Accra, the sector Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, announced that the move by government followed the public outcry and some other challenges.
She said the SIM card re-registration is designed to help government develop and build a SIM database with integrity, which will assist in curbing fraudulent activities, secure SIM Card based transactions.
The exercise
She added that the move is expected to aid the determination of the accurate number of valid SIM cards on the various telecommunication networks at any point in time.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful further explained that the 6-month exercise was expected to end on March, but was extended by another four months, which was to have ended yesterday.
She noted that the extension was granted to enable over 7.5 million Ghanaians and residents who had not obtained Ghana Cards at the time to register their SIM.
“It was also to give us the opportunity to provide modalities for the registration of diplomats and complete processes for rolling out a Self-Service SIM Registration App to facilitate the registration of SIM cards for both residents and Ghanaians living outside the country,” she said.
The Minister pointed out that the current SIM Registration Statistics indicates that the number of Voice SIMs stood at 41, 979,398, but some 15,395,607 had linked their Ghana Card to their sim cards.
She said the exercise is made of three stages, disclosing that “registration as of July 20, was about 25,260,661 representing 60 percent, while some 16,861,260 also representing 40 percent are unregistered as July 20, 2022”.
On the second stage, the minister mentioned that registrations, as of July 20, stood at 16,059,350, representing 38 percent, and unregistered SIMs stood at 26,062,571, also representing about 62 percent nationwide.
Caution
The Minister cautioned the public to stay away from the mischiefs and the propaganda of the members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (‘NDC).
She noted that subscribers who act on the counsel of the NDC do so at their peril, adding that government would not hear them when they fail to register their sim cards after the third time extended deadline elapses in September.
“Actions also have consequences and in all that we do, we must put the interests of our country first. In 2018, the NDC vociferously opposed the Ghana card and called on all their supporters to boycott the registration process,” she stated.
The Minister announced that the Self-Service SIM Registration App would be ready for commercial launch tomorrow. According to her, the Virtual Private Network (VPN) connectivity and Application Programming Interface (API) integration with all MNOs was only completed this weekend due to unavoidable circumstances.
She added that adequate time would also be required for publicity and public education on the use of the Self-Service SIM Registration App.
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