Accra, Ghana - The Ghana Chamber of
Telecommunications says it will continue with its engagements with telecom
regulators and technical partners to find a solution to the slow pace of the
SIM re-registration exercise in the country.
Kenneth Ashigbey, Chief
Executive Officer of the Chamber who said this during a recent virtual press
briefing organized by MTN Ghana, noted that since the commencement of the re-registration exercise, there had been regular meetings with regulators,
including the Ministry of Communications and Digitalization, the National
Communications Authorities and it's technical partner, Kelni GVG, where updates
about processes and procedures of the exercise have been shared, with the aim of
fine-tuning the process in order to speed up the registration exercise at various
centers across the country.
" It's important to
recognize that because this is a policy direction that the regulator is
implementing, a lot of the processes and we must confess that we have been
engaged in the process, but the decision are taken by the regulators and so how
all of these are done is a regulatory decision that has been made," he
stressed.
Service centers of
network operators across the country in January this year witnessed a surge in
the turnout of subscribers for the ongoing SIM registration exercise, which
started in October 2021.
This development results
from the slow pace at which the third party's (Kelni GVG) biometric App that collects
subscribers' bio-data functions.
According to Mr.
Ashigbey, despite regular updates to smooth out the process, the problem with
the biometric App designed by the government technical partner, Kelni GVG,
persists.
" Basically the
process as we are doing currently is what the regulator has mandated that we do
and we are working with them as much as we can, and we continue giving them
feedback on what is happening in the field and we all do not want to see the
numbers massing up in the service centers", he said.
Ghanaian subscribers have until the end of March 2022 to re-register their SIM card using their card or risk having their mobile numbers deactivated at the end of the deadline.
By: Kanto
Okanta
