Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communications and Digitalization, has declared that the SIM re-registration exercise’s deadline will now be September 2022.
The minister said the delay was required because registrants who have not yet received or obtained their national identification cards are experiencing some teething problems. The minister made this statement during a press conference on Sunday.
“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 Minister stated that the entire extent of sanctions will be disclosed at a subsequent press conference in September of this year.
Background
The SIM card registration process started on October 31, 2021, and it was planned to expire on March 31, 2022. However, as of March 17, more than 14 million SIM cards had been linked to the Ghana Card, more than 10 million biometric scans had been performed, and 99,445 additional SIMs had been registered.
It was obvious that the deadline for finishing the registration of the remaining active SIM cards could not be fulfilled due to a variety of circumstances, including the fact that more than 7.5 million citizens and residents had not yet obtained Ghana Cards to enable them to register their SIM cards.
The ministry decided to wait until July 31, 2022 as a result.
However, hundreds of people have either not registered their Ghana Cards or SIM cards as of Saturday, July 30.
The government and the ministry received numerous requests to postpone the July 31 deadline as a result of this.
