Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communication and Digitalisation, has revealed that over 8 million unregistered SIM Cards have been blocked as a result of the Ministry and the National Communications Authority’s punitive measures.
Madam Owusu-Ekuful believes that people who have yet to re-register their SIM cards should do so in order to help weed out criminals who use 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.”
Hundreds of people flocked to various registration centers of their telecommunication networks on December 1, 2022, to have their SIMs re-registered after they were blocked.
As a result, some of these SIM registration centers became chaotic.
The SIM re-registration process began in October 2021, when the government enacted a new law requiring mobile customers to link their SIM cards to their national identity card (Ghana Card) or risk having their service disconnected.
The NCA set November 30, 2022, as the deadline for subscribers to be blocked who had only completed stage one of the registration process (linkage to Ghana Card) but not stage two (biometric capture).
