Ursula Owusu at the Meet The Press
The Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation says they will launch the National SIM Card Registration Exercise across the country next month, October.
The sector Minister, Mrs Ursula Owusu Ekuffu who announced this at the Meet The Press Series held in Accra, Sunday said barring any unforeseen eventualities, the SIM Registration will begin on 1st October 2021 for a six (6) month period and end on 31st March 2022.
According to her, the government will also be implementing handset and equipment registration alongside the SIM registration and set up the CEIR as stated in the Executive Instrument 63, adding that, the Central Equipment Identity Register connects to MNOs’ systems in a non-intrusive manner to aggregate all IMEIs coming from all the local operators in a single national IMEI database.
She explained any sim which is not registered at the end of this exercise will be blocked.
The Minister noted that “OnIy the National Identity Card (Ghana Card) issued to an individual shall be used for registration of SIM cards of Citizens, Foreign Residents, and Foreigners staying in Ghana for more than 90 days” adding that ” In the case of foreigners staying in Ghana for less than 90 days, a valid passport or other travel document is required.”
She explained that “Individuals can register a total number of 10 SIM Cards across all networks and Foreigners will have a limit of 3 SIM Cards across all networks. Let me caution here, that people should not think that they can hide behind Businesses and register as many SIM Cards as they want”.
She said, ” all SIM Cards registered to a Business will be linked to a Shareholder or Director of the Business and if a Business SIM Card is found to have been engaged in a fraudulent activity, the Shareholder or Director will be held liable”.
The Sector Minister stated that “the minimum age for SIM registration has been set at 15 years, taking into consideration the increased use of communications services since the onset of the Covid- 19 pandemic and to facilitate E-education”.
Mrs Ursula Owusu noted that ” SIM registration, when undertaken correctly as we intend to do, will reduce or eliminate fraudulent and criminal activities, help authorities ascertain the accurate number of valid and accurate SIMs on the networks, enable operators to build better demographics of their customer base and help them develop products and services to suit the various groupings”
She explained that the regulator, National Communications Authority will also get more accurate data to regulate the industry even better.
The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, in March announced that the Ministry of Communication and Digitalization will between June and July, this year embarked on the re-registration of all SIM cards in use in Ghana.
This move is part of measures to help in the formalization of the Ghanaian economy.
The Vice President noted that the SIM registration exercise is aimed at helping curb activities such as SIM box and momo fraud.
He said the Government’s decision to formalize the Ghanaian economy has made it necessary for the various identity cards to be brought under one umbrella.
A six months grace period has been earmarked to get all Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) numbers re-registered with the Ghana Card.
The exercise is to add to the country’s central database with our unique IDs.
The process of registration can be done on one’s phone and does not require a visit to a Telco outlet. It can easily be done by dialling a dedicated USSD Code.
Furthermore, Ghanaians without the Ghana Card can obtain the cards from the NIA offices for free across the about 260 Districts from July.
– BY Daniel Bampoe