The National Communications Authority (NCA) has announced its decision to roll out some punitive actions against users who have not registered their SIM Cards.

This new move is expected to take effect from Monday, September 5, 2022.

According to a statement signed by the Authority’s Director-General, outgoing calls and data services for a sequential batch of numbers will be blocked for 2 days weekly on a rotational basis.

“MNOs [Mobile Network Operators] shall divide the unregistered SIMs into five batches for the purpose of implementing this punitive measure.

“These measures shall exclude blocking of SMS to give defaulting subscribers the opportunity to initiate registration if they so wish. Subscribers who fully register their SIM Cards within the period they have been blocked will only be unblocked by the MNOs after the 48 hours to avoid the MNOs tampering with their systems intermittently,” parts of the statement read.

The Authority further asked MNOs to liaise with the Electricity Company of Ghana, Ghana Water and other service providers to ensure that their data-only SIMs are registered duly.

The Director-General also directed the MNOs to configure their systems to facilitate the use of passports for non-resident Ghanaians until December 31, 2022.

“MNOs shall put disconnected SIM Cards in a holding category and current subscribers of these SIM Cards shall be given six (6) months to register their SIM cards, failing which these numbers will be churned by the MNOs.”