Haruna Iddrisu, Minority Leader of Parliament has condemned the re-registration of SIM cards initiative by the government. According to him, it is “clear Dr. Bawumia is naïve, clueless and largely incompetent on technology issues”.

Again, he argued that, the move will not resolve the challenges of fraud within the electronic transaction business in the country. This, he explained, is evident in his “previous attempt to assume that national issues have simplistic” actions.

His comments follow Vice President Dr. Bawumia’s insistence that anyone who fails to re-register their SIM will have it deactivated.

Reacting to this, the Minority Leader averred that, the SIM re-registration exercise will not solve the issue of Mobile Money fraud as expected by the Vice President.

Issued in a press statement, Mr. Iddrisu described the comments from the Vice President as “ill-informed, inept and highly naïve”.

“The solution to the challenges of fraud within the electronic money ecosystem goes beyond SIM registration.

“We hold the view that the mandatory re-registration of SIMS provides no substantial benefit in the fight against electronic money fraud, and will face practical challenges such as inbound travellers who require a SIM card without a national ID”.

SIM Re-registration provides no benefit

Touching on the SIM re-registration exercise, Mr. Haruna Iddrisu maintained that the exercise championed by the Vice President “provides no substantial benefit”.

Haruna Iddrisu, further criticised the resolve by government to only validate Ghana card as an accepted identification document. According to him, this will be “problematic” for many Ghanaians who do not have the card.

Also, he explained that others who have registered but are yet to receive their cards will be left challenged as well.

“The number of issued cards is only a pale shadow of the eligible population. The reality is that there have been only 17 million registrations done of the Ghana Card. This represents 55% of our population. An even smaller proportion of the population has actually received their cards. It needs no saying therefore, that there are practical difficulties associated with the card as it is facing systemic and operational difficulties in its rollout”.

Mobile money fraud

Mr. Iddrisu further intimated that a key area of mobile money fraud relates to the “attacks on mobile money vendors”. This, he said, poses a greater challenge and requires urgent redress beyond re-registration of SIM.

The Majority Leader also pointed out that, “the timelines” for the exercise are also “ambitious”. According to him, the entrance of the pandemic has necessitated the “need to prioritize human safety”.

“Re-registration of SIMS does not significantly mitigate the risk”.

“If the Vice President really desires simple solutions, he should consider instructing the BoG and the NCA to set key performance indicators for the mobile network operators (MNOs) about electronic money fraud and with consequences for breaches.

“The Vice President should urge subtly or overtly the MNOs to invest – proportionate to market share in advanced cybersecurity systems including additional personnel”.