According to the MP, since the start of this national exercise, he and others have made countless attempts at getting the minister to focus on the main issues bedeviling this activity but she has decided to do otherwise.
“We’ve blown ourselves horse (sic) on this issue because as far back as October last year, we tried to engage with the minister as soon as she announced this on the SIM car registration, and stated all the issues that exist therein, starting from the inconsistencies involved in the legislation – the fact that the legislation is clear…
“We have a minister of communications who has decided not to use the law that exists for the registration of SIM cards, but is going to use the law for the creation of a national ID register to register SIM cards. That in itself is problematic,” he said.
Speaking on the Tuesday, August 2, 2022, edition of Good Morning Ghana on Metro TV and monitored by GhanaWeb, Sam Nartey George explained further that, while he does not care how reluctantly or willingly Ursula Owusu-Ekuful extended the deadline for the exercise, he knows it is a cosmetic decision.
“At the press conference where she says she reluctantly granted us an extension. Whether she granted it reluctantly or willingly, we don’t care and we don’t want to care; all that matters is she has granted an extension. And that extension she’s granted, Randy, let me say again, is unfortunately inadequate because that extension is inadequate. It does not deal with the root cause of the problem… the problem is the acquisition of the Ghana Cards,” he stressed.
Addressing the media on Sunday, July 31, 2022, the Minister of Communication and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, announced an extension to the deadline for the SIM re-registration exercise to September 2022.
She said the extension had become necessary owing to the teething challenges facing registrants who are yet to be issued or acquire their national identification cards.
"Upon consultation with the industry and in view of the challenges enumerated above, I have very reluctantly decided to grant a final conditional extension. The pogramme will be extended to 30th September to end on the anniversary of its commencement. That will give us one full year of SIM re-registration," the minister stated.
"It will be reviewed at the end of this month [July] and any SIM that has not been fully registered by the end of August will be barred from certain services including voice and data. It will also be more expensive to use unregistered SIMs," she added.
The full range of punitive measures, the minister noted, will be announced at another press briefing which will be held in September this year.
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EA/WA
Sam Nartey George is the MP for Ningo Prampram