The government will launch a new statewide SIM registration campaign by the first quarter of 2026, according to Minister of Communications, Digital Technology, and Innovations Samuel Nartey George, who declared the old procedure used under the previous administration to be invalid.
In an interview with TV3 on Wednesday, December 3, the Minister stated that the previous exercise conducted under the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government by former Communications Minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful did not comply with basic technical and legal standards.
He contended that biometric verification, a crucial step necessary to guarantee that each mobile user’s identification is appropriately confirmed, was not used to properly validate subscriber information during the prior registration.
“The registrations that were purported to have been done by Ursula Owusu and the NPP did not cross reference the biometric they took from you against that database. Nothing of that sort was done,” he said.
Mr. George clarified that a new Legislative Instrument (L.I.) to direct the forthcoming registration has been finished and will shortly be presented to Parliament for approval.
He emphasized that before the rollout starts, the legal foundation needs to be solidly created.
“The L.I is ready and again I am meticulous about what I am doing. First quarter next year, we will run it out. We are currently at the Public Procurement Authority doing the procurement of the service provider to do the SIM registration, we have drafted the L.I and it will be laid before Parliament because again there must be a proper legal basis for what we are doing,” he stated.
The Minister made it clear that the new procedure should not be viewed as an extension of the earlier one.
“We are not doing a re-registration. We are doing a SIM registration. You didn’t do any registration, the former Minister just wasted everybody’s time,” he said.
Mr. George disclosed that his Ministry and the National Identification Authority (NIA) have established a deal to incorporate biometric databases, allowing for easy verification during the registration procedure.
He emphasized that this will guarantee that the biometric information of subscribers matches the Ghana Card information.
“So, now we have sat down with the Interior Minister and his head of agency, Yayra Koku at NIA. We have worked out the integration between the Telco, the regulator, NCA and the NIA,” he said.
He further informed that the Ministry has already begun cleansing and synchronising biometric data previously obtained during the NPP-era initiative.
“All the biometrics they collected, it was just sitting in databases scattered all over the place. We have picked those databases and we are now cleaning them up and cross referencing them with the NIA in the backend. About 80 per cent of them have been done,” he reiterated.
Source: newsthemegh.com