Mobile phone subscribers who have not registered their SIM cards can heave a sigh of relief following the decision by the National Communications Authority (NCA) not to deactivate their telephone numbers.
Registration of SIM cards came to an end on Friday, September 30 but the NCA will allow those who have not registered their SIM card to do so because of certain factors.
Paarock Van Percy, Director General of the NCA, said people are now living up their civic responsibilities and are doing the right, adding it will therefore be unfair to �unduly penalize� them because there was an error on their data.
He told Joy News that the exercise must continue, adding, �We haven�t completely exhausted cleaning up the irregular or invalid registration.�
He noted that though the deactivation was on hold, he was certain �at some stage, no doubt, it will come to a closure.�
He said his outfit is enjoying �very progressive and cordial discussions� with the chief executives of telecoms operators and was working closely to bring closure to the registrations exercise.
At the end of June 2010, a little over 18 million people had been captured on the national subscriber database but approximately 19 million have been registered as at now.
Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Communications, also urged all existing subscribers to take advantage of the window of opportunity the NCA has provided to register their SIM cards.
�Our primary objective is to see an end to an era of anonymous text messages, death text messages, our inability to trace fraud of persons whose identities remain unknown with the use of SIM registration, but we will need to take a definite position, and that would be done by the NCA.�
Presently five mobile telecom operators, MTN, Vodafone, Tigo, Airtel and Expresso are operating in Ghana. The sixth operator, Glo is preparing to launch its operations next month.
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