The Director-General of the National Communications Authority (NCA), Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko, has clarified that the government’s decision to conduct a new SIM re-registration exercise is intended to address irregularities identified in previous registration processes.
His comments follow the government’s recent announcement of plans to roll out another nationwide SIM re-registration exercise.
Speaking in an interview on Channel One TV’s The Point of View, Ing. Fianko noted that the upcoming exercise will be Ghana’s third official SIM registration process.
He explained that the first SIM registration exercise, conducted in 2011, faced significant challenges because identification documents were not properly verified.
“This will be the third official registration process. The first one was done in 2011. The challenge with it is that there was no verification at all of the IDs. What we did was a manual verification of some limited cases along the way,” he stated.
According to Ing. Fianko, the second registration exercise aimed to link all SIM cards to the national identification card issued by the National Identification Authority (NIA). However, the process was not fully completed.
“There was supposed to be verification of the ID card; we did one part of it, but the second part didn’t happen. The policymaker, NIA, couldn’t get alignment to do the second phase, which was the validation of the biometric,” he explained.
He also revealed that several irregularities were detected during the exercise, including cases where fake photos and identities were used to register SIM cards.
“There are cases including fake photos, the same name but a different person. We saw fake IDs used to register,” he said.
Ing. Fianko emphasised that the new re-registration exercise is aimed at establishing a credible and reliable system that will ensure subscriber information is properly verified.
“What we want to do is to have a single source of truth. We want to ensure the ID details are correct and that the person who brought the ID is indeed the person,” he added.
He further assured Ghanaians that they will not bear any cost associated with the upcoming SIM re-registration exercise.
