SIM card re-registration deadline ends today

The deadline for SIM card re-registration ends today, September 30, 2022.

This comes after the Minister for Communication and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, extended the deadline for the sim card re-registration initially scheduled for July 31, 2022.

The minister said the extension had become necessary owing to challenges such as delays in the rollout of a self-serving registration app and delays in the acquisition of Ghana Cards, which is the mandatory document for the registration.

"Upon consultation with the industry and in view of the challenges enumerated above, I have very reluctantly decided to grant a final conditional extension.

"The programme will be extended to September 30 to end on the anniversary of its commencement. That will give us one full year of SIM registration to be reviewed at the end of this month and any SIM that has not been fully registered by the end of August will be barred from fully receiving certain services including voice and data services. It will also be more expensive to use unregistered SIMs. The full range of punitive measures will be announced at another press briefing in September," the minister stated.

The SIM card registration exercise began on October 31 2021, and was expected to end on March 31 2022; however, as of March 17, over 14 million SIM cards had been linked to the Ghana Card, with over 10 million Bio-captures conducted and 99,445 new SIMs registered.

Due to some factors, including the fact that over 7.5 million citizens and residents were yet to obtain Ghana Cards to enable them to register their SIM cards, it was clear the deadline for completion of the re-registration of the remaining active SIM cards could not be met.

As a result, the ministry extended the deadline to July 31, 2022.

However, many are still facing challenges in acquiring their Ghana Card.



NYA/SEA