Ursula Owusu Hints At ‘Measures’ To Deal With Persons Deliberately Refusing To Re-register SIMs

The Minister of Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has hinted at possible sanctions for persons who deliberately refused to take part in the SIM Re-registration exercise.

This comes on the back of the expiration of the October moratorium granted by the Ministry to get SIM users to re-register their cards.

Mrs. Owusu-Ekuful, however, maintained that her ministry is in talks with the National Identification Authority (NIA) to address the challenges of registrants with genuine concerns.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Technology Breakfast Meeting organised to deepen the awareness of the government’s digitalization drive among public sector chief executives, she entreated Ghanaians to support measures the government is putting in place to protect the digital space.

“We all need to ensure that we protect the systems that we are putting in place. This is one aspect of it, but the SIM re-registration is also another aspect of it. There are some who have genuine concerns, and we are working with the NIA to [address them]. But there are others who have the Ghana cards but have not completed the process. So clearly, either they do not intend to, or are unwilling to, so we will have some measures to announce in due course soon,” the Minister of Communication and Digitalisation explained.

The Ministry announced in October that 28,959,006 SIM cards have been linked to Ghana Cards so far.

This number represents 67.28% of the 42,749,662 total SIM cards issued nationally.

Furthermore, 18,930,664 SIM Cards have been fully registered, representing 44.28% of the total SIM cards issued.

The ministry acknowledged that some of our citizens have had difficulties obtaining Ghana Cards to enable them to undertake their SIM registration.

This led to the announcement of a grace period for persons who have started but not completed the process to re-register their SIM cards until October 31.