The National Communications Authority (NCA), has justified the need for citizens to physically present themselves at the various outlets of their mobile network operators to complete the re-registration of their SIM cards.
The Director of Consumer and Corporate Affairs at the National Communications Authority, Nana Defie Badu, said this while reacting to complaints about long queues at re-registration centres and suggestions for the registration to be done digitally.
“[The previous registration] gave room for fictitious registrations and it also gave room for pre-registered SIM cards. This current registration is going a step further to make sure that the person who has linked their Ghana card to their SIM card is that same person who owns the Ghana card to prevent SIM fraud.”
In an interview on Accra-based Class FM, Nana Defie Badu blamed registrants for the long queues and the slow pace of the registration process.
According to her, a number of the registrants failed to complete the first stage of the registration process hence spend a longer time with customer care representatives at the various telco centres to complete that stage before proceeding to complete the second stage.
She also said many registrants refuse to leave the premises of the mobile network operators even if they are advised to come the following day due to the limited number of persons that can be registered in a day.
“What is happening is that, even after they give tickets to these [limited] 100 customers, the costumers who are not included in the quota for the data collection refuse to go away. Most consumers fail to do the first phase of the exercise before they visit the mobile network operator or the agents. Going there without the first stage increases the time frame for engagement with the customer care representatives,” she explained.
Meanwhile, the Chamber of Telecommunications says it is hopeful that an update to the software used for the SIM card re-registration process will help speed up the process.
The Chief Executive of the Chamber, Ken Ashigbey, said in a Citi News interview that, “we know that there’s been a lot of challenges and KelvniGVG are the people who have developed the app to provide the second phase of the biometric verification and there have been a lot of updates that KelniGVG has done.”
“There is one that is due for Thursday evening, and all of it is supposed to speed up the process. There have been some bottlenecks with them and that is why we are having the queues at the various centres. We hope that this new update will quicken the process and make it faster,” he said.
