SIM re-registration: Deactivating SIMs could cause chaos – Martin Kpebu

SIM re-registration and the decision to go ahead with deactivating SIMs could cause chaos, and we’re not ready to do that, according to Mr. Martin Kpebu, a Private legal practitioner.

Martin Kpebu called on the Communications Ministry to rescind the decision in the interest of the Ghanaian people while speaking on Myjoy’s Newsfile on Saturday. He kicked against the decision to implement the July 31 deadline for the SIM re-registration exercise.

The idea behind the deadline for SIM registration needs to be scrapped entirely and better approaches are used to get Ghanaians to register, while at the same time the Ghana Cards must be issued to the many registered persons who are yet to lay hands on their cards.

READ: SIM re-registration date extension coming – Projection

The country’s 2021 Population and Housing Census, data shows that 19.9 million Ghanaians are 15 years and older and some 15.7 million have obtained their Ghana Card per the information given by the Finance Minister during the presentation of the 2022 mid-year budget review.

Again, only 12 million persons have been able to fully register their SIM cards per the Communication and Digitalization Ministry’s own data. Bringing the SIM re-registration to an end would mean preventing some 7.5 million people from using their SIM cards.

 

Per Mr. Kpebu’s argument, the number of SIM cards to be linked to the Ghana cards are many making the exercise at the Telcos, a daunting task. He furthered that, ending the process could create some complications.

“We are not ready at this juncture to deactivate the SIM card that has not been registered with the Ghana card, let’s not deceive ourselves. It is going to cause chaos. Let’s not forget these SIM cards, we use them to make calls, and so we pay taxes.” Mr. Kpebu said.

He added that deactivating yet-to-be-linked SIMs has serious security implications for the country.

READ: SIM Re-registration extension: 5 reasons why it must be extended

“There are also going to be huge security implications. So for me, I think it is clear that we would have to do an extension, the numbers are too huge.”

In his view, Ghana cannot risk cancelling SIM cards and blocking them from being used by owners.

Nigeria initiated a similar process and lessons can be learned from them because the government gave no deadline for re-registration of the SIMs instead, citizens were encouraged to link their cards and the process was continuous.

Ghana’s gorilla approach with leadership holding entrenched positions and threatening the citizenry with deactivating their SIMs is rather unfortunate.

“It is mind-boggling that there is a threat to deactivate SIMs. There is some experience from Nigeria, they are also in this process, they extended it three times and March this year was the last deadline. When they got to March this year, they saw that there are still millions who haven’t done theirs, so they just said we entreat citizens to continue,” Mr Kpebu added.

Some 72 hours to the supposed 31st July deadline, there has been constant tension and huge numbers of Ghanaians massing up at the NIA registration offices and at the telecommunication outlets across the country in a desperate attempt to register their SIM cards ahead of the deadline on Sunday, July 31 as they fear to lose their SIM cards by the deadline.