The Minister for Communications, Samuel Nartey George, has reaffirmed that telecommunications companies will bear the full cost of Ghana’s forthcoming SIM card registration exercise.
Speaking during an interview on Channel One TV on Monday, Mr. George explained that the move is part of efforts to strengthen the country’s telecommunications infrastructure while ensuring accountability among industry players.
He revealed that plans are underway to lay a Legislative Instrument (LI) before Parliament to provide legal backing for the policy.
“They [telcos] will pay for it. I will make them pay for it. There is an LI that we will be laying before Parliament,” he said firmly.
Mr. George drew a clear distinction between the upcoming exercise and the SIM re-registration initiative led by his predecessor, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful. He criticised the previous approach and stressed that the new exercise is not a re-registration but a fresh, comprehensive registration process designed to clean up and centralise the national SIM card database.
“That was one of my criticisms of Ursula Owusu—that the re-registration she did… and that is why I have been clear that I am not doing a re-registration. I am doing a SIM registration,” he clarified.
The Minister further noted that the upcoming exercise will rely exclusively on the Ghana Card, which he described as the “single source of truth” for identity verification.
According to him, this approach will ensure that the data collected is accurate, verifiable, and centralised—addressing the gaps and inconsistencies that plagued past registration exercises.
Providing historical context, Mr. George referenced the last legislation governing SIM registration, enacted in 2010 under then-Minister Haruna Iddrisu.
“The last LI on the record for registration was 2010 by Haruna Iddrisu, and don’t forget that registration Haruna did—there was no Ghana Card at the time, and so there was no single source of truth,” he concluded.
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