Information reaching Techfocus24 from very reliable sources indicate that telecom operators in the country have been mandated to, by end of April, issue a universal short code by which customers can check and know how many SIM cards are linked to their Ghana Cards.
This comes after Techfocus24 Editor, Sammy Dowuona blew the alarm in a Facebook post, on how fraudulent SIM registration is going on, where some telcos are using the Ghana Cards of innocent people, to register SIM cards for strangers, possibly fraudsters, without the consent of the card owner.
This fraud came to light when a chief (name withheld) who had three official SIM cards linked to his Ghana Card, tried to register a fourth SIM on AirtelTigo, but got feedback that he had exhausted his regulatory maximum allocation of ten SIM cards per person. He then visited AirtelTigo only to find that seven other SIM cards have been linked to his Ghana Card without his consent.
Sammy then made several posts on social media calling on Ghanaians to go to their respective telcos and check how many SIM cards are linked to their Ghana Card. He also proposed that National Communications Authority (NCA) should mandate all telcos to issue a universal short code for individuals to go check how many SIM cards are linked to their Ghana Cards.
Subsequent to that expose, popular Ghanaian broadcaster and owner of KofiTV, Kofi Adomah also went public and stated he went to MTN and checked for himself, and found that indeed several other SIM cards have been linked to his Ghana Card.
Then a Facebooker by the name of Stevyn Laweh’s Daily also posted a similar experience of how he personally found out at MTN that seven other SIM cards have been linked to his Ghana Card.
Techfocus24 has just been told by a very reliable source that by the close of April, telcos will put out a universal (common) short code that will allow all customers to check and know how many SIM Cards are linked to their Ghana Cards.
According to the source, for starters it will be “a short code for individual subscribers to verify the number of SIMs associated with their Ghana Card – you just type the short code on your phone, and after a verification process using your Ghana Card PIN, the number of SIMs associated with your Ghana Card will be displayed.”
The short code will also show the list of all the actual phone numbers linked to a particular Ghana Card, so that the card owner can tell whether he/she personally registered those numbers or not.
Suggestions
Whereas that is a step in the right direction towards building a robust SIM register devoid of the flaws found in the previous one, it would also be important for telcos to be mandated to always send SMS in real time to the primary numbers on any Ghana Card anytime a new SIM is linked to the card.
Closely related to that, telcos must also be mandate to send our messages to all primary numbers on every Ghana Card with the list of SIM cards currently linked to the Ghana Card.
Again, the feedback message from the universal short code to be provided by the telco should be in the form of an SMS which can be stored on our phones, and not just a one time pop-up message.
