A strong digital economy, according to Richard Okyere-Fosu, director general of the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), depends on the ongoing registration of the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card.
The re-registration of SIM cards was crucial to the fight against cybercrime, he said, because a digital economy requires a database and digital ID among other things to survive.
To make society a safer place to live in, Mr. Okyere-Fosu pleaded with everyone to refrain from politicizing the registration process.
Speaking at the launch of a new office of eSolutions consulting in Accra, the Director General of NITA said, “The exercise is important for all of us to note. Let’s not play politics with it because if you register your SIM, we know who you are, if you commit a crime, we know who you are and it’s important.”
“We talk about cybersecurity when people are doing things hiding behind unregistered SIMs or SIMs that are registered in other people’s names and they are committing crimes, we need to know who is committing the crime so SIM registration is very important. It’s just like our national ID card.it’s very important. For our digital economy, we must have an ID payment platform and ID is digital ID, SIM registration and all those things are important,” he added.
Meanwhile, Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has said all unregistered SIM cards will be blocked by October 31, 2022.
She warned vendors to desist from pre-registering and selling SIM cards to customers as the act was an offence which could lead to the imprisonment of culprits for up to 5 years.
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful urged culprits to, as a matter of urgency, delink the SIM cards and work in accordance with the law.