An independent presidential aspirant for the 2024 general elections, Kofi Koranteng has dared the Minister for Communications and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful to go ahead and terminate unregistered SIM numbers as she has threatened.
Ursula is scheduled to address the media on the afternoon of Sunday, July 31, 2022, the day set aside as the deadline for all Ghanaians to re-register their SIM cards by linking them to their Ghana Cards.
The minister during the media address is expected to announce the government’s final position on the deadline.
However, in view of the fact that most Ghanaians are yet to access their Ghana Cards from the National Identification Authority (NIA), concerns have been raised widely for the minister to reconsider the deadline.
Current statistics show that out of the 41.6 million mobile number subscribers in the country, only 14 million have so far completed their SIM Re-registration as of Saturday July 30, 2022. The minister has emphatically stated that “The deadline won’t be extended”.
In an interview with ghananewsonline.com.gh, Kofi Koranteng wondered what the sense of the deadline is. He urged the Minister to immediately heed the call of majority of Ghanaians and cancel the deadline for the SIM card re-registration especially since most Ghanaians have not been able to access their Ghana cards yet, let alone link them to their SIM card.
“It seems as if we voted for these bunch of position holders to come to power, live on the hog and inconvenience us instead of serving our needs, and I dare Ursula Owusu to suspend the re-registration of the SIM cards because it is just unthinkable to create such inconvenience in our lives and put a deadline to it," he said.
According to him, “nothing the NPP does seems like they are working to make our lives better. It seems as if our interest is not of interest to them. Everything they do is just to inconvenience the Ghanaian and we want to ask why? Why did they even bother to come to power if they did not come to serve us?
"They promised they were going to serve us, that is why we gave them the chance to come, and now it seems as if they are the biggest liability in terms of thought, in terms of what they do, everything. It’s been a huge disservice and a liability to the Ghanaian to have the NPP as a leadership group in Ghana and we shall forever regret that."
He emphasized that the whole idea of SIM card re-registration should never have happened because it is a huge security threat to the nation’s credit file. He emphasized that registering and giving citizens biometric details to a foreign company that can decide in a minute that they are leaving Ghana to set up elsewhere, could undermine the citizens’ future risk management.
“I wonder what compliant and regulatory parameters the NCA has set up for these telcos to make sure that our information is protected, that in the event of a hack, our information is destroyed and they can’t retrieve the information, they have to be able to communicate preparedness to the NCA as to how they are protecting our information on their systems, and the NCA has to have constant or regular checks with these telcos to make sure that the Ghanaian citizens’ data is protected and encrypted at the highest level of security to make sure that nobody can get access to our information if that is ever possible,” he noted.
He called on Ghanaians to rise and protest the attitude of the government because they deserve far more than they are getting from the current government.
GA/BB
Independent Presidential Aspirant, Kofi Koranteng