2 months is not enough for all SIM cards to be registered

The two months extension announced by the government is not enough time to guarantee that all Ghanaians would re-register their SIM cards, the Mobile Money Agents Association have lamented.

According to the association, the challenge for many registrants is their inability to access their Ghana Cards.

Evans Otumfuor, Secretary of the association, in an interview with Citi FM said until problems facing the National Identification Authority are dealt with, the extension would have little impact.

“Looking at the exigencies that government wants us to regularise our credentials with the Ghana Card, we were thinking that at least, within a space of six months, it should be enough for us to get quite a good number of people.”

The government had extended the deadline for people to re-register their SIM cards to July 31 from an initial March 31 date.

Persons who had failed to comply with the directive would have had 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.

Statistics from the National Communication Authority (NCA) show that as of Thursday, July 21, 2022, 16,969,034 individuals had registered for the Ghana Card, with about 16,535,623 cards printed, while 15,395,607 had linked their Ghana Card to their SIM cards.

To boost the registration process, the government has implemented a self-service application, which will be made available on Android and IOS platforms this week.