The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Dr. Kenneth Ashigbey, has clarified that the previous SIM card registration exercise was not ineffective but rather incomplete.
His comments follow the announcement by the Minister-Designate for Communications, Digital Technology, and Innovation, Sam Nartey George, regarding plans for a new SIM card re-registration process to address shortcomings in the previous exercise.
In 2022, the government mandated SIM cardholders to link their numbers to their Ghana Cards. However, the process faced numerous challenges, including inefficiencies, long queues, and SIM blockages for non-compliant users.
During his vetting, Sam George criticized these issues and vowed to introduce a more efficient system that would integrate directly with the National Identification Authority (NIA) database.
Speaking on Eyewitness News on Citi FM on Monday, February 3, Ashigbey elaborated on the matter:
“I wouldn’t say it is useless. I would say it was incomplete. The thing about it is the fact that the biometric data that was collected was not reading properly.”
He pointed out that the fingerprint data was not captured as accurately as the NIA’s system, stressing the importance of using the NIA database as the “single point of truth.”
“What we should have done was use the NIA database to complete the cycle,” Ashigbey noted.
He explained that while the initial phase of SIM registration verified data against the NIA database, the second phase—biometric verification—was flawed.
“We do the liveliness test, we do the likeliness test, we collect the biometric data, but we don’t compare it with the single point of truth, which is the NIA database,” he stated.
Ashigbey emphasized the need to correct this gap to ensure the new registration process is comprehensive and effective.
Credit: Citinewsroom
