The Minority in Parliament is calling for the use of other national identification cards in the ongoing sim card re-registration exercise. It explained that this will enable more Ghanaians partake in the registration.
In a presser, the deputy ranking member for the communications committee, Mr. Sam George described government’s six-month ultimatum for the re-registration of sim cards by Ghanaians as a constrictive one. He argued that the way and manner the exercise is being rolled out could be counterproductive.
Sam George on behalf of the Minority caucus demanded the withdrawal of the threat of deactivation of SIM cards after the re-registration exercise describing the move as illegal.
“The minority recommends the immediate withdrawal of the threat of deactivation of valid SIM cards by March 2022, the scrapping of the physical visit to an agent of a service provider for authentication of the registration document. We recommend an integrated referencing of databases of the Passport Office, DVLA, NHIA and SSNIT with the NIA database whose cards were used largely as primary registration documents for previous SIM registrations. [Also], the use of Passports, Driver’s License and Voter’s ID cards to allow for the inclusion of more Ghanaians in the registration process.
“We urge the Ministry of Communications and Digitalization to take these steps in good faith. We believe this would actually accelerate our digital ecosystem in this age of COVID-19. We have also spoken to our lawyers to advise us on all legal options open to us on this matter.”
Sam George
·SIM Card re-registration to weed out cyber fraud- Magdalene Apenteng
·SIM re-registration exercise is at no cost to the state- Mrs Nana Defie Badu
Sim card re-registration, not pragmatic
Sam George, however, averred that the re-registration has not been pragmatic to curb the number of fraudulent sim cards in the country. He argued that the claim that linking a SIM card to the Ghana Card could prevent fraud is flawed and explained that the ministry can cut down on these fraudulent sim cards by using other data bases available in the country.
“If you are saying that the last registration that was done, some people used fraudulent national ID cards to register their sim cards, that should not mean that all 32 million active citizens card holders in Ghana must go through a re-registration. Identify those whose cards are fraudulent. You can do that using the Ghana Card registration, you can do that using the NIA database, you can do that using the EC voter database, we can even use the SSNIT data base, the DVLA data base and even the National Health Insurance data base that we are synchronizing in the country so we can do a cleanup of that data.”
Sam George
Mr. Sam George questioned the Communications Minister as to how citizens in the rural areas will partake in the registration since they have no internet connectivity. However, he suggested the use of biometric data of the rural people captured by the NIA to undertake this exercise.
“You can use my Ghana card pull off the data base and link it to my sim card, if I want to use my passport, link it and pull it off that data base. We urge the Minister for Communication and digitalization to take these steps that we propose.”
Sam George
