The Minister for Communications and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has alerted the public of the SIM card registration deadline scheduled for 31 July 2022.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful emphasised that there would be no extension after a previous grace period.
The SIM registration exercise began on 1 October 2021 and was expected to end on 31 March 2022 but was later extended to 31 July 2022.
It was extended because over 7.5 million citizens and residents were yet to obtain their Ghana Cards to enable them to register their SIM cards.
“I, therefore, take this opportunity to urge all those who’ve not registered their SIM cards to do so as the deadline of 31 July 2022 will not be extended,” she noted.
Speaking at a forum by the National Communications Authority (NCA) in Kumasi, Mrs Owusu-Ekuful stated that the exercise would ultimately help build a credible and safe SIM card database in Ghana.
“Most people access their internet through their mobile devices. We must make sure that they do so safely. We must make it difficult for the criminals who hack our systems and defraud us through multiple online channels to operate, and this SIM registration exercise is one of the steps the government is taking in that regard. Essentially, this stresses the point that this exercise will enable the establishment of a subscriber database with integrity to keep the consumers safe from scams and fraud,” she added.
As of 17 March 2022, a total of 14,091,542 SIM cards had been linked to the Ghana Card.
Out of that, 10,348,532 had been bio-captured, and 99,445 were new SIM cards.