Communications Minister, Haruna Iddrisu has reiterated that mobile phone users have no reason to worry about their phone calls being monitored because the law does not allow any such thing. The Minister was reacting to critics of government’s decision to engage Haitian-based Global Voices Group (GVG) to implement the Call Verification System. He says the government is not that irresponsible to mortgage the privacy of the Ghanaian to a foreign company. “Government’s only interest is to ensure that we stop the leakage and accrue as much revenue as possible to the state for development”, he says. According to him government has been very particular about ensuring the fundamental freedoms of the Ghanaian thus the inclusion of the specific clause barring anyone from listening in, on phone conversations. Quoting sections of the Amendment of the Electronic Communications Act, 2009, he says government is only interested in knowing the volume of all international inbound calls through the Call Data Records (CDR). Section 25(a)(10) of the Act provides that “The mechanisms and measures referred to in sub-section 5 instituted shall not have the capability to actively or passively record, monitor or tap into the content of any incoming or outgoing electronic communication traffic, including voice, video and data..., whether local or international”. He says the widespread panic amongst the public that their phone calls will be monitored has been created by the mobile operators. He says Vodafone’s opposition to the whole system in particular is not principled and opportunistic because they had approached the Ministry to be given the chance to manage the Call Verification System. He said, Vodafone Ghana was seeking to be made the clearing house for the International Gateway Termination Project, instead of GVG, and so he was not surprised about the company’s “public outburst” on the matter. Iddrisu explained that the government was compelled to introduce the Call Verification System because of the growing phenomena and incidence of call by-pass by which international calls were terminated as if they were domestic calls. This undercut revenue to be derived from international call traffic gains. “It has become very common and the Ghanaian public can attest to this fact of receiving international calls on 024, 026, 027 and 054 numbers, instead of them coming through the +233 sovereign code of Ghana,” he said. Mr Iddrisu said the government had so far detected 3,000 of such fraudulent numbers being used for the termination of international calls through SIM boxes, adding that in March, April and May, 2009, the government lost more than $500 million as a result of such fraudulent practices. He said the government remained determined and focused to check the fraudulent practice of SIM boxes being used for the termination of international inbound calls. Commenting on Vodafone’s concerns about the credibility and reputation of GVG, the Communications Minister said GVG was currently operating in Togo and Congo Brazzaville and that those countries had achieved improved revenue as a result of the company’s operations. He maintained that the system would have no negative impact on the end user, but rather bring huge financial benefits to the nation and even the mobile telecommunication operators. Myjoyonline.com/Ghana