A policy analyst on governance, Selorm Branttie says the Communications and Digitalisation Ministry is unnecessarily rushing the SIM card re-registration exercise.

According to him, the National Identification Card (Ghana card) which is a fundamental requirement for the exercise is not readily available to every Ghanaian.

Thus, the IMANI Africa Vice President in charge of Strategy says, the Ministry should take its time in implementing deadlines for the re-registration exercise.

His comment comes after the National Communications Authority (NCA) announced its decision to roll out some punitive actions against users who have not registered their SIM Cards.

The new move which took effect today, September 5, 2022, will have outgoing calls and data services for a sequential batch of defaulters’ numbers blocked for 2 days weekly on a rotational basis.

A section of Ghanaians have kicked against this decision, however, others believe that the punitive actions will force people to register their SIM cards.

But speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, Mr Branttie argued that nothing will be achieved if defaulters still don’t have their Ghana cards to register.

“You are talking about a very seismic change in the way that we are going to be registering our SIM cards.  For any process that is planned in this way, one of the first things you have to look at is dependency.

“We are in a situation where the major dependency for re-registering SIM cards is Ghana card. It is not a given that everyone has a Ghana card. It is not also a given that those who are processing their Ghana cards can get it instantly,” he argued.