Owners of SIM cards who have not completed stage-two of the ongoing re-registration exercise will have their service deactivated after March 10, 2023, the National Communications Authority (NCA) has warned.
Stage-one, also known as self-registration, involves linking a subscriber’s Ghana Card details to a SIM card while the second involves the capturing of biometric details, which is mostly done at the offices of telecommunication companies or authorised agents.
“To reiterate, the importance of the SIM Registration Exercise is to develop and build a SIM database with integrity, which will assist in curbing fraudulent activities. The NCA [therefore] continues to urge all subscribers to complete their SIM registrations with their Ghana Cards to avoid deactivation,” NCA said in a statement.
Earlier this month, the Minister of Communications and Digitilisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, revealed on the floor of parliament that the number of SIM cards which have not attempted to re-register at all stood at 8.7 million as of February 9, 2023.
The number of people that completed the process of SIM registration are 25.2 million, per the communications and digitalisation ministry’s data.
Reminding subscribers to complete the exercise, NCA added that: “Subscribers that have done stage-one are to complete their SIM registration [stage-two] by Friday 10th March 2023, failing which these SIMs will be deactivated from their network(s)”.
The Authority further noted subscribers who have begun the registration process (stage-1) and do not complete their registration within a period of two weeks will have their SIMs deactivated from their network(s).
“To reiterate, the importance of the SIM registration exercise is to develop and build a SIM database with integrity which will assist in curbing fraudulent activities. The NCA therefore continues to urge all subscribers to complete their SIM registrations with their Ghana Cards to avoid deactivation,” said the statement.
The ongoing SIM reregistration started in October 2021 and was expected to last for six months – giving enough space and time for SIM card owners to get their Ghana Cards to facilitate the re-registration process.
The exercise has however faced undue delays and long queues at SIM registration centres across the country, as well as the National Identification Authority’s failure to issue cards leading to numerous extensions of the deadline.
The Ghana Card is the main identification document in Ghana currently, without which one cannot register his or her SIM card.
