The Director-General of the National Communications Authority (NCA), Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko, has explained that the government’s planned nationwide SIM re-registration exercise is intended to correct irregularities identified during earlier registration processes and establish a more reliable subscriber database.

His comments follow a recent government announcement indicating plans to roll out a new SIM re-registration exercise across the country.

Speaking in an interview with Channel One TV on Monday, March 9, Ing. Fianko said the upcoming exercise would be the third official SIM registration process undertaken in Ghana.

He explained that the first registration exercise conducted in 2011 encountered significant challenges because there was no effective system to verify identification documents submitted by subscribers.

“This will be the third official registration process. The first one was done in 2011. The challenge with it is that there was no verification at all of the IDs. What we did was a manual verification of some limited cases along the way,” he said.

According to him, the second registration exercise sought to improve the process by requiring subscribers to register their SIM cards using the national identification card issued by the National Identification Authority.

However, he noted that the exercise could not be fully completed because the planned biometric verification phase was never implemented.

“There was supposed to be verification of the ID card; we did one part of it, but the second part didn’t happen. The policymaker, NIA, couldn’t get alignment to do the second phase, which was the validation of the biometric,” he explained.

Ing. Fianko disclosed that irregularities were detected during the previous registration exercise, including cases where fraudulent photographs and identities were used to register SIM cards.

“There are cases, including fake photos, where the same name is used by a different person. We saw fake IDs used to register,” he said.

He emphasised that the new exercise is aimed at establishing a credible system where subscriber details can be properly authenticated against a trusted national database.

“What we want to do is to have a single source of truth. We want to ensure the ID details are correct and that the person who brought the ID is indeed the person,” he said.

Ing. Fianko also assured that subscribers would not be required to pay for the upcoming SIM re-registration exercise.