Mobile telephone service operators are calling for a postponement of the deadline for the registration of all Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) cards in the country. The move is to allow them ample time to correct all the anomalies associated with the registration exercise. They would, however, not say for how long the extension should last. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Graphic, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Telecom’s Chamber, Mr. Kweku Sakyi Addo, said comments from the National Communications Authority (NCA) regarding the detection of the use of some identification cards which cannot be authenticated, among others, made the call for an extension a necessity. Information from the NCA points to 25 and 30 per cent of the more than 16 million registered cards as being invalid because of the use of numbers on ID cards which cannot be verified by any issuing authority. The issue about the deadline has sparked a lot of debate in recent times with Imani Ghana, an economic and social think tank, calling for an extension of the deadline on the grounds that people may genuinely be deprived if the SIMs were deactivated. “It is true that some people might have been able to have their registration done properly or might have used ID cards which may not be genuine, but have been used for the purpose”, Mr. Sakyi-Addo added. Meanwhile, in an earlier interview granted Daily Graphic, the Director-General of the NCA stated that, “There is really no merit in doing so when we have registered well over 95 percent of subscribers”. In an interview with the NCA, Mr. VanPercy stated categorically that “we do not need to extend the deadline because at the current number of registrations, it is quite obvious that those who have not registered will either do the last minute thing to register close to the deadline or simply have no interest in registering these SIMs. Mind you, some people have SIMs they hardly have used for so may not deem it worthy registering them”. “What we are concentrating on now is working with the operators to sanitise the data received so far. This exercise requires the operators to get subscribers who have not followed the right procedure in registering, with the assumption that the improper way they registered will not be detected, to get registered properly”, Mr. VanPercy said. Mr. VanPercy wondered what an extension would achieve, considering that the ongoing discussion itself was a reminder and warning enough to get unregistered SIM users register. “Subscribers have had a whole year with regular reminders to get their SIMs registered and, therefore, if anybody still remains unregistered, then that person must have a reason for not doing so,” he said. On the challenges detected with the registration, he said it was simply because some people registered without using any one of the five required IDs. What the registration agents would have done would have been to register subscribers who came to them without an ID by recording that the subscriber submitted an ID, say a Voter’s ID, to complete the registration. Such information when verify at the EC database would show a blank. He, however, admitted that the authority had encountered some anomalies using its verification system to crosscheck the authenticity of the registration numbers provided by the subscribers and noted that about 30 per cent of the 95 per cent registration would have to be revisited within the time frame. Asked what the telecoms would do should the NCA maintain its positions on the June 30 deadline, Mr. Sakyi-Addo said, “we will have to comply and do what is required of us”. He said the operators could only point to some issues that could be resolved, but had no authority to extend the deadline. Source: Daily Graphic/Ghana