Minister-Designate for Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, Sam Nartey George, has announced plans by the new government to do SIM card re-registration all over again with the telcos bearing the full cost of the exercise.
Speaking during his vetting before the Appointments Committee of Parliament, Sam George noted that currently, telcos are unable to depend on the current SIM register to identify persons behind SIM cards that are used for fraud, which is completely contrary to what the previous said in justifying SIM re-registration.
During that exercise, the telcos paid at least GHS5 per every single SIM card to the National Communications Authority (NCA) and its private sector partner. They also paid some money to the National Identification Authority (NIA) and its private sector partner, as part of the exercise.
After paying all those moneys and being assured by the state actors that the exercise was going to make it easy for all SIM holders to be identified easily, fraud incidents in the mobile money space, post SIM re-registration, has proven that the SIM register has never been a resource that helps to identify any fraudster.
Indeed, when the flaws of the SIM re-registration started emerging, some critics, including industry watcher and consumer advocate, Samuel Dowuona, did state, at a public forum and in several writeups, that the way things were going, it was likely for another government to undertake another SIM re-registration to fix the emerging challenges.
True to those predictions, Sam George said this government is going to undertake another SIM re-registration, but this time round, it will be a completely technological exercise between the telcos, the NCA and the NIA, to ensure that all registered SIM cards are verified.
“We will do a proper SIM re-registration exercise again, but this time, nobody is going to queue because common sense will prevail, expertise will prevail, and logic will work,” he quipped. “Today as we speak the telcos cannot still tell who holds their SIM cards so it is in their interest that we do a proper SIM re-registration again.”
According to him, no SIM holder will be required to visit any telco’s office during the exercise, but if there was a disparity regarding a particular SIM, the holder will receive notification asking him or her to report to the respective telco for it to be addressed.
“Over 90% of SIM holders will not be required to visit their telcos during the exercise – they will only receive notification on their phones confirming that their SIM has been verified. But a few people may get invitations to visit their respective telcos.” he said.
Sam George also assured Ghanaians that “no one is going to lose their SIM by reason of the coming SIM re-registration because it will only be to properly verify all existing SIMs and not to deactivate any of them.”
He said the exercise will leverage technology, cross-referencing telcos’ data with the NIA database to eliminate unnecessary manual processes, adding that only individuals with data discrepancies will be required to visit telcos’ offices.
Justifying why telcos have to pay for the exercise, even though they had paid for SIM registration twice already, Sam George said it is in the interest of the telcos to know who is holding their SIM cards, and they need a clean and reliable register to ensure that.
“It is in the telcos’ own interest to have a clean register in order to know who holds their SIM because if they don’t know who is holding their SIMs they will be liable to fines, and they will prefer to pay for a clean register instead of a fine,” he said.
