The Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Dr. Ing. Kenneth Ashigbey believes the September 30, 2022 deadline for SIM re-registration will be enough as long as government “takes some serious steps.”

Speaking on the Point of View on Citi TV, Mr. Ashigbey said “the total number of Ghanaians who are yet to receive their Ghana cards is about 2.97 million, and then we have some 808,000 who had not received their cards as at the last time I collected data. That brings us to about 3.781 million Ghanaians yet to receive their cards. If we divide that by 61 days and then by 275 district offices plus the 16 Regional offices, the NIA should be doing 165 registrations daily.” “This is not impossible to do,” he added.

Mr. Ashigbey acknowledges that the main challenge to be faced in meeting the deadline will be easy access to the NIA centres. He thus recommended that government supports the NIA to take the registration to the doorstep of Ghanaians.

“Just as politicians take voter registrations to the doorstep of Ghanaians at the polling centres, I will recommend that government provides NIA with extra resources such that they are able to deploy as close as possible to the citizens.”

He also urged government to collaborate with the NIA to ensure that persons living with disabilities are registered.

The government set July 31 as the deadline for all persons to re-register their SIM cards with their Ghana Cards. People who fail to comply with the directive will have their SIM cards deactivated.

The regulations are to help law enforcement agencies to identify SIM card owners, track criminals who use phones for illegal activities, curb phone theft, hate text messaging, mobile fraud activities and SIM Box fraud.

They are to also help identify subscribers for the use of value-added services such as mobile banking, mobile money and electronic payment services.

However, not all Ghanaians have been able to secure their Ghana Card.

The National Identification Authority has indicated that 15,702,719 cards have been issued while 808,493 cards have been printed but not issued.

Government thus extended the deadline for the re-registration to September 30, 2022.

It has also created a self-service registration application to ease the registration process.

 Source: Edna Agnes Boakye (Citi Newsroom)