Ningo-Prampram MP Sam Nartey George says over 90% of residents in his constituency are yet to be issued their Ghana Cards after registering in February, this year.
He described the situation as worrying, adding that the ‘affected’ residents may end up not registering their SIM cards due to government’s handling of the exercise.
In an interview with Roselyn Felli on Prime Morning on Tuesday, Mr Nartey George blamed the development on the lack of personnel at the Prampram office of the National Identification Authority (NIA).
“I am saying that since February of this year, about 90% of the people who registered in the NIA office in Prampram have not had their cards.
“We have raised this issue, summoned the NIA to Parliament a number of times and NIA said it had manpower challenges.
“The NIA boss made it clear to me that for the Prampram office, for example, he should have 22 people working in that office [but] you have only four people working in that office.
“Even the way they are structured, they would eventually produce the cards but they cannot deal with the timeline that the NCA has set, and so you cannot entirely blame the NIA as well,” he said.
His comments follow some punitive measures the National Communications Authority (NCA) has rolled out against mobile users who have not yet registered their SIM cards.
The punitive actions which took effect on September 5 will ensure that outgoing calls and data services for a sequential batch of numbers are blocked for two days each week on a rotational basis.
“MNOs [Mobile Network Operators] shall divide the unregistered SIMs into five batches for the purpose of implementing this punitive measure.
“These measures shall exclude blocking of SMS to give defaulting subscribers the opportunity to initiate registration if they so wish.
“Subscribers who fully register their SIM Cards within the period they have been blocked will only be unblocked by the MNOs after the 48 hours to avoid the MNOs tampering with their systems intermittently,” parts of the statement read.
But Sam George believes these measures, coupled with the deadline set for the entire registration exercise, are not well thought through.
According to the lawmaker, the Communications Ministry should have effectively engaged stakeholders rather than rushing the process, especially when the NIA is struggling to issue the Ghana Cards to users that have registered for it.
In a related development, private legal practitioner Martin Kpebu has expressed worry over the re-registration exercise.
Speaking on the AM Show, Monday, Martin Kpebu said the target by government to register all SIM cards by the end of September this year cannot be achieved.
“I think that let us have further education and extend the deadline. The aggression to register all the SIM Cards within such a short time is too much.
“This is a public service, it is not as if Ghana is coming to an end in December this year. They should sit back and let us continue to educate people and make it easier,” he noted.
