SIM Card Registration Extended; See deadline

SIM Card Registration Extended; See deadline.

The ministry of communication and digitalisation announced earlier in the month that it will not extend the SIM registration exercise beyond the 31st July deadline.

However, a former minister for communication Mr. George Andah has assured Ghanaians that the deadline will be reviewed. He made this disclosure during a panel discussion on TV3 Key Points show on Saturday monitored by CitizenOne.

According to George Andah, the minister for communication Hon. Ursula Owusu Ekuful hinted on this possibility during her engagement with the media when she said there will be a press conference on Sunday. He said Ghanaians will be the winners at the end.

“Let me state that I am no longer at the ministry of communications so I don’t speak for that ministry. But you recall that in a recent media engagement, the sector minister stated that she will organise a press conference on Sunday. Let’s wait to see what comes out of that. Currently only 14 million out of the over 42 million SIMs have been successfully registered with the Ghana Card.

So are you expecting the government to blacklist the remaining 28 million? That cannot be possible. That is why I said let’s wait for Sunday. There will surely be an extension”, Mr. Andah stated.

On his part, the MP for Ningo-Prampram Hon. Samuel Nartey George stated that the minister cannot disconnect any SIM in Ghana. He said he has decided not to register his SIM because he doesn’t believe it is going to happen.

According to the ranking member for parliamentary select committee on communications, the minority was against the re-registration of SIMs with Ghana Card because it is not backed by law.

According to the NDC MP, Ghana was making a lot of gains in the digitalisation agenda and that was because of easy access to SIM cards in Ghana. If the SIMs are deactivated on 31st July as threatened, we will be rolling back all our gains which cannot happen.

Another danger of this exercise has to do with people who took Quikloans with their mobile money accounts, according to Sam George. He said some of these subscribers have not registered yet and when their SIMs are deactivated, the telcos will lose hugely. He said just as the March deadline was extended, he expects the July deadline to be extended to January 2023.

Meanwhile, the Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has announced an extension to the deadline for the SIM re-registration exercise to September 2022.

Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, the minister said the extension had become necessary owing to the teething challenges for registrants who are yet to be issued or acquire their national identification cards.

“Upon consultation, Government has decided to grant a final conditional extension. The programme will be extended to September 30 to end on the anniversary of its commencement, that will give us one full year of SIM re-registration,” the minister stated.
“It will be reviewed at the end of this month [July] and any SIM that has not been fully registered by the end of August will be barred from certain services including voice and data. It will also be more expensive to use unregistered SIMs,” she added.

The full range of punitive measures, the Minister noted will be announced at another press briefing which will be held in September this year. SIM Card Registration Extended; See deadline

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