The government of Ghana through the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation, and the National Communications Authority has for close to a year been conducting a SIM re-registration exercise.
A recent announcement by the government aimed at easing the registration process however has led to concerns about government defeating its own purpose for the exercise.
According to some critics, the government may have shot itself in the foot by announcing new measures that presents loopholes in the reginstration process.
The Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, in a last-minute move, extended the deadline for the SIM registration exercise which was expected to end on Sunday, July 31, 2022.
Along with the announcement of the deadline extension came new guidelines and measures which while aimed at easing the process, are also meant to compel people who have rather become reluctant to go ahead and register their SIM cards.
Initial concerns about the registration exercise, which required the use of only the Ghana Card as the mandatory document for verification, was the inability of some individuals to acquire the Ghana Card.
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful highlighted this as one of the main reasons the exercise would be extended to the end of August.
However, in justifying the insistence on the use of a Ghana Card, the Ministry of Communication underscores the fight against fraud and crime, which formed the basis of the entire SIM re-registration exercise.
“There are genuine concerns about the upsurge in criminal activities using mobile devices and social media. And we need to be able to, on a case-by-case when issues arise, be able to identify and track down those fraudsters. The only way we can do that is through a secured database,” Ursula Owusu-Ekuful said in an interview with Asaase Radio on August 2, 2022.
As part of measures to ease the registration process, the minister on Sunday announced the introduction of a self-serving app that individuals can use to register their SIM cards at a fee.
Despite the convenience the new measures present, some concerns have been raised about lapses that may bedevil the new app.
There have been concerns about unscrupulous individuals using the Ghana Card of others to register a SIM to be used for fraudulent activities.
The SIM registration exercise, which was initially being conducted by agents of the telecommunication networks, basically linked an individual’s Ghana Card to their SIM Card by verifying the person’s identity.
In doing so, the agent takes a photograph of the individual and then goes on to take a picture of their palm with a focus on the fingers.
According to a Vice President of IMANI Africa, Selorm Brantie, the self-serving app falls short in properly identifying an individual.
He argued on Citi TV’s Point of View that while the scanners and devices used by the registering agents can capture data in formats readable by the government’s database, it will be difficult for the data presented by applicants through the self-serving app to be read by the system.
“Now we have a situation where anybody using any phone with a camera from an Infinix or a Tecno that is 5-years-old to the latest iPhone 13 Pro Max or [Samsung] S22 Ultra or whichever superphone there is today, are going to use cameras of different calibrations and qualities from cameras that are 1 megapixel to cameras that are 48 megapixels.
“And what that means is you are going to have a whole raft of data. Let me give you an example; it’s like you being given an olonka of gari and you say that you are going to sort them by grain size manually with your hands before you now put it into a system. It is that serious because the information that is captured by the hand, what shows that the fingerprints that I took or I am taking with my phone is the fingerprints of my son or my grandmother?” he questioned.
On the ability of an applicant’s phone to read their fingerprints, Selorm Brantie stated that “even if it can do that, the format in which that data is being captured is not a format that is readable by NIA’s platform.”
On his part, a member of Parliament’s Communications Committee, Samuel Nartey George, has also raised concerns about the decision by the ministry to allow persons living abroad to register using their travelling passport as a verification document on the self-serving app.
According to him, the decision defeats the purpose of the registration exercise, which is to fight fraud and vindicates the position of the minority in parliament that other forms of national cards could be used for the identification of applicants.
He noted that persons in Ghana with access to a passport could use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to change their location to register a SIM card which can be used for fraud activities.
Footnote
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has indicated that the self-serving app will officially be available for download by the close of Tuesday or later within the week.
While the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation is expected to address some of the concerns about the self-serving app, GhanaWeb believes it will serve its purpose better if the National Communications Authority makes it possible for a person to check the number of SIM cards registered in their name or with their Ghana card.
Minister for Communications and Digitisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekulful