The Ministry of Communication and Digitisation has officially extended the SIM card re-registration exercise to September 30, 2022.
This was announced by Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the Ministry of Communication and Digitisation.
“Upon consultation with the industry and in view of the challenges enumerated above, I have very reluctantly decided to grant a conditional extension. The programme will be extended to 30th September to end on the anniversary of its commencement.” the Minister said in a press briefing.
“That will give us one full year of SIM registration. It will be reviewed at the end of this month and any SIM that has not been fully registered by the end of August will be barred from receiving certain services including voice and data services,” she said.
Many people had been struggling with the re-registration exercise due to logistic problems with the printing of their Ghana cards.
“The statistics indicate that there was a 90% drop in SIM reregistration, as soon as the first deadline was extended on 21st March. Until a week ago there were no queues, people started going to register when they realised that the deadline was imminent after going to sleep.”
“The mobile network operators, NCA, and the NIA have all engaged additional staff, procured the necessary logistics and are incurring significant expenses to conduct this exercise successfully, any extension of the process increases their cost,” she added.
According to data from the National Identity Authority, only 15.7 million users have been able to obtain their Ghana Card. (Ghana’s estimated population is currently 30 million)
12 million citizens, according to the Minister of Communications and Digitisation, have been able to fully register their SIM cards.
Self-Service SIM Registration App To Be Launched This Week
The Minister also stated that her Ministry would launch a SIM registration app to help reduce fraudulent and criminal activities facilitated by mobile phones or SIM-enabled devices by helping the authorities to ascertain real numbers valid and accurate SIMs on mobile networks. Registration of a SIM Card will come with a surchage of GHC 5.
She added that it would also enable operators to build better demographics of their customers and develop products and services to suit various groupings while allowing the NCA to have a more accurate and credible database to regulate the industry better to enhance economic growth.
“It will minimise mobile money fraud, promote cybersecurity and support financial inclusion. A credible and reliable SIM register will also serve as a database, giving comprehensive statistics regarding the number of subscribers in the country and provide a resource for tracking fraudsters and criminals.,”
