Ghana has evolved into an odd country, where we bring unusual processes with us, even though technology can solve them.
On October 1, this year, the Ministry of Communications began re-registering SIM cards.
The initiative, according to the Ministry, will extend through March 2022 and is aimed to reduce the threat of mobile phone fraud.
However, the re-registration process is so inconvenient that we begin to doubt if our officials have the citizens’ best interests at heart.
The procedure for registering one’s sim card is as follows.
1. Dial the short code *404#
2. Enter Ghana Card Pin ( Note: Enter letters and figures without hyphens)
3. Confirm Ghana Card Pin
4. Enter Surname
5. Enter First Name(s)
6. Enter Date of Birth (Format: DDMMYYYY)
7. Select Sex
8. Confirm Details
9. Submit Details Provided After Confirmation
- Chieftaincy violence in Asamankese leaves nine people injured and 38 people arrested.
- Omicron is more transmissible, but is it really milder?
As if this process is not tedious enough, when you are done, you are to visit the nearest office of your service provider to complete an already laborious process.
In the considered opinion of this newspaper, the whole process around the Sim Card re-registration, has not been thought through well. In this era of self service applications, we do not understand why anyone should be asked to be present in person to retake his or her biometrics which has already been captured by the National Identification Authority for the issuance of the Ghana card.
Majority of phones Ghanaians use, have biometrics. A simple application would allow one to capture at least three finger prints using the phone and together with the Ghana card number, all one has to do is to send for verification, and when a match is found, then the sim is registered.
A visit to any of the mobile telecommunication service providers, especially MTN, will reveal a scary picture of people queuing from morning to evening just to go through the process of re-registration. Technology is supposed to make our life easy, but our leaders have made sure we have to suffer for everything, including even queuing to attend to nature’s call.
