Adnan Adams Mohammed
The National Communications Authority (NCA) has come out to clarify the hanging pertinent issues concerning the fate of those individuals who do not have their Ghana cards as at now.
It said, individuals yet to obtain their Ghana Card will not be affected by the ongoing SIM deactivation.
The telecommunication companies, last week announced that subscribers who have failed to complete the biometric stage of registration will have some services disconnected. The services to be blocked are; voice, data (Mobile, phones, mifis, other data providing devices), SMS (incoming and outgoing) USSD, mobile money services and emergency services.
“For those who do not have their Ghana cards and have not been able to register, those people will be exempt from any punitive measures pending the NIA giving them their Ghana card,” the Director for Consumer & Corporate Affairs at the NCA, Nana Defie Badu, noted in an interview, last week.
She explained further that her outfit was opened to help address the concerns of the general public and their inability to register their SIM cards.
“We acknowledge that there are some people who actually got to the stage where they actually linked the sim to the Ghana card but unfortunately, after doing that their Ghana card were either lost, damaged or through no fault of theirs, they could not proceed to do stage two.
“So, for these people, we have actually asked that they should engage the NCA by calling our toll-free number. After we do an investigation and verify the issue, these people will also be put on the exclusion list pending them getting their Ghana cards reissued to them,” she said.
Consequently, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Dr Ken Ashigbey, has said the blocking of some 9 million unregistered SIM cards will have a toll on the revenue of mobile network operators in the country.
Dr Ashigbey explained that if each of the nine million subscribers spends, at least, GHS20 every month on all the various networks; that’s a huge revenue loss.
That notwithstanding, the blocking of SIMs has to be done even though it is worrying, he said.
Since November 20, the telecommunications companies in Ghana have been blocking data services for subscribers who have only linked their Ghana Card and SIMs (Stage 1) but have not captured their biometric data (Stage 2) as part of the SIM registration process as directed by the Ursula Owusu-Ekuful-led Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation
