The deadline for re-registering SIM cards has been moved up to September 30, 2022.
The Ministry of Communication and Digitalization has mandated that SIM cards be reregistered, although many consumers have had trouble doing so. The Exercise was supposed to end on July 31, 2022, on a Sunday.
However, the Communications and Digitalization Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, stated at a press conference on Sunday that the extension came after discussions with industry stakeholders.
“Upon consultation with the industry and in view of the challenges enumerated above, I have very reluctantly decided to grant a conditional extension. The programme will be extended to 30th September to end on the anniversary of its commencement.”
“That will give us one full year of SIM registration. It will be reviewed at the end of this month and any SIM that has not been fully registered by the end of August will be barred from receiving certain services including voice and data services,” she said.
The Minister pointed out that many Ghanaians failed to register their SIMs even when the deadline was extended, in spite of problems with the Ghana Card, such as long queues.
“The statistics indicate that there was a 90% drop in SIM reregistration, as soon as the first deadline was extended on 21st March. Until a week ago there were no queues, people started going to register when they realised that the deadline was imminent after going to sleep.”
“The mobile network operators, NCA, and the NIA have all engaged additional staff, procured the necessary logistics and are incurring significant expenses to conduct this exercise successfully, any extension of the process increases their cost,” she added.
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