The deadline for SIM card re-registration has been extended to September 30, 2022, according to a statement from Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communication and Digitalization.
The government appointee, who spoke to the media on Sunday, said she “reluctantly” extended the exercise, which was originally supposed to expire on July 31, 2022.
The delay came the following dialogue with the industry, the Communications Minister stated on Sunday during a news briefing. The process encountered some difficulties..
“Upon consultation with the industry and in view of the challenges enumerated above, I have very reluctantly decided to grant a conditional extension. The program will be extended to 30th September to end on the anniversary of its commencement.”
“That will give us one full year of SIM registration. It will 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 receiving certain services including voice and data services,” she said.
Despite difficulties with the Ghana Card, such as long lines, the Minister observed that many Ghanaians still failed to register their sims after the deadline was extended.
Consequently, this deadline extension is the last one.
“The statistics indicate that there was a 90% drop in sim reregistration, as soon as the first deadline was extended on 21st March. Until a week ago there were no cues, people started going to register when they realised that deadline was imminent after going to sleep.”
“The mobile network operators, NCA, and the NIA have all engaged additional staff, procured the necessary logistics and are incurring significant expenses to conduct this exercise Succesful, any extension of the process increases their cost,” she added.
This comes as a large number of Ghanaians swarmed telecom stores all over the nation in an effort to register their SIM cards in time for the second deadline on Sunday, July 31.
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