SIM Card registration exercise to be rolled out by 1st quarter of 2026 – Sam George

Star InactiveStar InactiveStar InactiveStar InactiveStar Inactive
 

Minister of Communications, Digital Technology, and Innovations, Samuel Nartey George has said government will commence a new SIM registration exercise by first quarter of 2026.

The Minister in an interview on TV3, Wednesday, December 3 argued that the previous SIM registration exercise conducted by the former Minister and erstwhile NPP government was not valid.

He insisted that “the registrations that were purported to have been done by Ursula Owusu and the NPP did not cross reference the biometric they took from you against that database. Nothing of that sort was done.”

According to Sam George, the Legislative Instrument (L.I.) for the SIM registration is ready and will soon be presented to Parliament to be approved.

“The L.I is ready and again I am meticulous about what I am doing. First quarter next year, we will run it out. We are currently at the Public Procurement Authority doing the procurement of the Service provider to do the SIM registration.

“We have drafted the L.I and it will be laid before Parliament because again there must be a proper legal basis for what we are doing. Already, there’s been testing, there’s been all kinds of things done by the regulator,” he stated.

“We are not doing a re-registration. We are doing a SIM registration. You didn’t do any registration, the former Minister just wasted everybody’s time,” Sam George clarified.

He said the Ministry has worked out modalities with the National Identification Authority (NIA) to ensure that biometrics match specific individuals to ensure seamless registration.

“So, now we have sat down with the Interior Minister and his head of agency, Yayra Koku at NIA. We have worked out the integration between the Telco, the regulator, NCA and the NIA.

“All the biometrics they (NPP) collected, it was just sitting in databases scattered all over the place. We have picked those data bases and we are now cleaning them up and cross referencing them with the NIA in the backend. About 80% of them have been done,” he added.