The Director-General of the National Communications Authority, Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko, has explained that the government’s planned nationwide SIM re-registration exercise is aimed at correcting irregularities discovered during previous registration processes and establishing a more reliable subscriber database.

His remarks follow the government’s announcement of plans to conduct a new SIM re-registration exercise across the country.

Speaking in an interview on Channel One TV on Monday, March 9, Ing. Fianko said the upcoming exercise would be the third official SIM registration process carried out in Ghana.

Challenges during the first registration

According to him, the first SIM registration exercise, conducted in 2011, faced significant challenges because there was no effective system to verify identification documents submitted by subscribers.

“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 said.

Second exercise incomplete

Ing. Fianko explained that the second registration exercise attempted to improve the process by requiring subscribers to register their SIM cards using the national ID card issued by the National Identification Authority.

However, the process could not be fully completed because the planned biometric verification stage was never implemented.

“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 stated.

Fraudulent registrations uncovered

The NCA Director-General disclosed that several irregularities were detected during the previous registration exercise, including instances where fraudulent photographs 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.

Building a trusted national database

Ing. Fianko said the upcoming exercise is intended to establish a credible system where subscriber information can be properly verified against a trusted national identification database.

“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 explained.

He also assured the public that subscribers will not be required to pay for the upcoming SIM re-registration exercise.