A policy analyst, Selorm Branttie, has dared the Minister for Communications and Digitalisation to block unregistered SIM cards as announced on September 30, 2022.
According to him, when such a thing is done, there will be chaos in the country.
He stated that every SIM card cannot be registered before the deadline, and therefore, blocking the cards will be a great disservice and loss of revenue to the services sector.
“Per how they have run this whole enterprise so far, it is not going to be possible that by September 30, we would have every Ghanaian who has a SIM card complying with this re-registration module. I am very curious to see what will happen after September 30,” he is quoted by myjoyonline.com.
He noted that the Minister of Communications is the cause of the current chaos surrounding the SIM card registration exercise.
“And I double dare the Minister to go by her own words and see the kind of chaos that will happen in this country. I am saying chaos because you are talking about flirting with the fortunes of the service sector, which contributes more than 45% of our GDP.
"You are talking about flirting and toying, making a petri-dish of the whole digitization agenda which is being run by the Vice President himself, and by so many different organizations. You are talking about flirting with our SDGs. You are talking about blocking digital access, you are talking about creating digital apartheid where people are being made to pay for another organization not fulfilling their obligation…when she has been the mother of all this chaos.”
Meanwhile, the Member of Parliament for Ningo-Prampram, Sam Nartey George, stated that putting a deadline on the exercise would not fix the problem.
“A deadline in itself will not fix the problem. Deadlines will not produce the Ghana Cards. The National Security is minded by this. You see she tried to block SIM cards two days in the last week. The NCA issued a public statement, but when they were rescinding the decision to the Telco, they did it nicodemusly in the quiet of the night. And now they are saying they are no longer blocking this week. I join Selorm to dare the Minister to block the SIM cards on September 30,” he stressed.
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communications and Digitalization