The Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr. has described the announcement on re-registration of SIM cards in the country as “useless”.
He said exercise will be ‘fruitless’ and ‘useless’ unless the right measures are put in place.
His reactions come after the government warned that Ghanaians should re-register their SIM cards before June 2020.
According to Ursula Owusu Ekuful, the Minister of Communications, failure to adhere to this new directive will result in the loss of numbers.
She said Ghana enacted the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) Registration Regulations, 2011 (L.I. 2006) primarily to reduce mobile phone related crimes such as prank calls, cyber-crime, mobile money fraud, and its related issues and general security.
She stated that the enactment was also intended to help the law enforcement agencies to identify the SIM card owners, track criminals who use phones for illegal activities, curb incidents such as phone theft, hate text messages, mobile fraud activities, inciting violence, and to combat crime such as SIM Box fraud.
“SIM registration also enables subscribers to be properly identified for the use of value-added services such as mobile banking, mobile money, and electronic payment services. Due to the crucial nature of SIM registration and its security implications for the country, MNOs were required to ensure SIMs were registered properly before activation on the mobile network to avoid inconsistencies and fake subscriber identity.
“Even though the SIM Registration regulations are still in force, it is not being enforced due to the lack of acceptable, fake proof, Identification card and non-existence of verification by a national database to ensure the traceability of the individual who registered the SIM card,” she said.
However, Kwesi Pratt said even though he has never been against the registration of sim cards, it will be useless if the country keeps spending the taxpayers’ money on bthe exercise only for it to be repeated.
He said he was in a queue for 5-6 hours to re-register some years ago.
Speaking on Accra-based Peace FM, the veteran journalist said: “the system has failed, a complete failure.”
