The Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has announced an extension to the deadline for the SIM re-registration exercise to September 2022.
Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, the minister said the extension had become necessary owing to the teething challenges for 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.
Background
The SIM card registration exercise began on 31st October 2021 and was expected to end on 31st March 2022 but as of 17th March, over 14 million SIM cards had been linked to the Ghana Card with over 10 million Bio-Captures conducted and 99,445 new SIMs registered.
Due to a number of factors including the fact that over 7.5 million citizens and residents were yet to obtain Ghana Cards to enable them register their SIM cards, it was clear the deadline for completion of the registration of the remaining active SIM cards could not be met.
As a result, the ministry extended the deadline to July 31, 2022.
However reports from multiple media outlets including GhanaWeb indicate that as of Saturday, July 30, thousands have either not registered their Ghana Card or SIM cards.
This led to several calls on the government and the ministry to cause an extension to the July 31 deadline.
