Minister of Communication and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has revealed that over 8 million unregistered SIM Cards have been blocked following the rollout of punitive measures by the Ministry and the National Communications Authority.
She made the revelation to journalists at the sidelines of the 14th ITU Kaleidoscope event.
Madam Owusu-Ekuful opined that persons who are yet to re-register their SIM cards must do so to help in weeding out criminals who take advantage of the internet’s anonymity to defraud others.
“Those who have linked their SIM cards to their Ghana card in the first phase of the registration exercise, but have not gone on to conclude the registration exercise by doing the biometric capture phase, are those whose SIMs have been blocked.
“It is important that we do this because without the security of our devices we are all at risk. There are fraudsters and criminals out there who are using the anonymity of the internet and social media to defraud others, and we need to ensure that no one can hide behind this anonymity.”
From December 1, 2022, hundreds thronged various registration centres of their telecommunication networks to have their SIMs re-registered after they were blocked.
This resulted in chaos as some of these SIM registration centres.
The SIM re-registration exercise began in October 2021 when the government introduced a new law that required mobile customers to link their SIM cards with their national identity card (Ghana Card) or risk being disconnected.
The regulator, NCA gave November 30, 2022, as the deadline for subscribers who had only completed stage one of the registration process (linkage to Ghana Card) but not stage two (biometric capture) to be blocked.
Pulse
