Up to 7.5 million Ghanaians at risk of losing phone numbers
Accra, Feb. 22, 2012
Millions of Ghanaians are at risk of losing their phone numbers come March 3, 2012, as statistics recently released by the National Communications Authority (NCA) indicate that 5,580,875 various identity cards presented for SIM registration were rendered invalid.
Out of the total number of registered SIMs, 1,457,858 identity cards are yet to be submitted for verification by the respective agencies such as the Passport Office, Electoral Commission (EC), Drivers and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), and the National Identification Authority (NIA).
Another total number of about 463,443 subscriptions are yet to register their SIM cards. In total, the NCA says about 22, 708, 716, which was 98 per cent of the total number of mobile subscriptions in the country, had so far been registered and verified.
Meanwhile, the NCA has laid the blame for the millions of invalid SIM registrations at the doorstep of the telecom operators for failing to monitor their registration agents.
Director-General of the NCA, Paarock VanPercy said in an interview with a Tema-base radio station that, those agents were doing shoddy jobs since they were paid per how many subscribers they were able to register.
For that matter, he said, they overlooked the legally mandated requirements needed for the registration process.
He said the telecom operators were pre-occupied with making money from subscribers instead of ensuring that their agents were doing the right thing.
Meanwhile, the telecom operators have argued that those numbers may include persons who used valid IDs, but could just be victims of human error during the manual verification process.
But the NCA Boss said most the registrations found to be invalid were either dormant numbers sitting on the networks of the various telecom operators, or SIM cards registered fraudulently and are being used for SIM Box fraud.
It has therefore asked the telecom operators to follow up with their subscribers whose registrations have been declared invalid to go regularise their registration or they would be deactivated on March 3, 2012.
The telecom operators will face sanctions under the newly passed SIM Registration Regulation if they refuse to deactivate unregistered numbers on the deactivation date.
The NCA recently stated in a press release that it would not extend the March 3, 2012 legally mandated deadline.
In Ghana, the law requires citizens to register their SIM cards using either passport, driver’s license, voter ID card, National Health Insurance Card or National Identification Card
Subscribers who want to find out whether their numbers have been registered or not can do so by sending a blank message to short code, 400 on all networks.
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