Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Dr. Kenneth Ashigbey, says telecommunication companies are against any decision that would result in subscribers losing their SIM cards.
Dr. Ashigbey explained that if people lose their SIM cards due to their inability to re-register, it would have dire implications on the country’s revenue generation from the Communications Service Tax (CST).
“It is not in the interest of us to make sure that even one genuine person loses his SIM card. You should bear in mind as many people who would lose their numbers that would mean CST revenue would be lost as many people have their mobile money on it. Thus, e-levy revenue potentially could be lost,” he stated.
Speaking on the AM Show, Monday, he urged the National Communications Authority and the National Identification Authority to figure out issues concerning Ghana Cards to allow Ghanaians re-register their SIM cards.
“What we[Telcos] would hope is that the conversation between NIA and NCA would be able to resolve a lot of the issues around those who do not have their Ghana Cards so that they would get the Ghana Card to be able to do the registration.”
Meanwhile, the National Communications Authority (NCA) has rolled out some punitive actions against users who have not registered their SIM Cards.
This new measure takes effect from Monday, September 5, 2022.
According to a statement signed by the Authority’s Director-General, outgoing calls and data services for a sequential batch of numbers will be blocked for 2 days weekly on a rotational basis.
“MNOs [Mobile Network Operators] shall divide the unregistered SIMs into five batches for the purpose of implementing this punitive measure.
“These measures shall exclude blocking of SMS to give defaulting subscribers the opportunity to initiate registration if they so wish. Subscribers who fully register their SIM Cards within the period they have been blocked will only be unblocked by the MNOs after the 48 hours to avoid the MNOs tampering with their systems intermittently,” parts of the statement read.