The re-registration of mobile SIM cards started on 1st October 2021
The Minority in Parliament is demanding the inclusion of other national ID cards as pre-requisites in the ongoing SIM card re-registration exercise.
It would be recalled that the government has ordered a re-registration of all sim cards as part of moves to dealing with digital fraud.
As a requirement, one is demanded to present a Ghana card as a pre-requisite for registration.
But at a press conference, the minority caucus on the Communication Committee has kicked against the move to limit the registration to only the Ghana card.
The deputy minority spokesperson on the committee, Sam Nartey George, argued that the Legislative Instrument (211) clause (1) does not limit such exercises only to the Ghana card.
They describe the move to disconnect all persons who fail to register their sim cards by March next year, with the Ghana card as an affront to the rights of the citizen, he added.
The Minority proposed four-point steps to making the process a robust one including the withdrawal of threat to disconnect all sim cards that fail to register by next year and scrapping of the physical visit to offices of the National Identification Authority (NIA )office for registration purposes.
The re-registration of mobile SIM cards started on 1st October 2021.
The exercise, which will last for six months, will end on 31st March 2022.
Any SIM which is not registered at the end of this exercise will be blocked, the Ministry of Communications and Digitization has disclosed.
In a bid to rid the country’s cyberspace of fraud, monitor and track down persons who use their phones for criminal activities, the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia announced that plans were underway to organize a sim re-registration exercise.
Addressing the 5th Ghana CEO Summit in Accra, the Vice President noted that any individual who fails to take part in the exercise risks losing his or her SIM card.
“We all have to do that otherwise we’ll lose that SIM card. That will really give us a real identity for all MoMo transactions. For example, it takes away fraud that is taking place like SIM box and through MoMo”, he added.