The National Communications Authority (NCA) has disclosed of plans to extend the March 31 deadline for the SIM card re-registration exercise if need be.
This comes after several calls by Ghanaians for the NCA to change the date in order to ease tensions at the various re-registration centres.
Director of Consumer and Corporate Affairs at the Authority, Nana Defie Badu, in response to the request, assured that her outfit will continue to monitor the process and change the deadline if necessary to allow Ghanaians more time to complete the process.
She made these assertions on Accra based Class FM on Friday.
“For the NCA and the Ministry of Communication, one of the reasons for this exercise is not to deprive people of using communication services. The main objective is to make sure that people are using the communication services in a secured manner such that any transaction you do with your SIM can go through smoothly and then there are no issues.”
She added, “By saying this, we will continuously monitor the process. If it gets to the stage where we have to extend the deadline, we will because the communication access is very critical for our development for the use of all services in Ghana.”
For several weeks now, it has become commonplace to see people in long queues at the various telecommunication offices and centres in Accra, hoping to have their SIM cards re-registered.
Although the telcos have attributed the slow process to challenges being fraught with the registration software, the National Communications Authority (NCA) believes the customers are partly to blame for the congestion at the various SIM re-registration centres.
According to the Authority, the failure of customers to complete phase one of the process before visiting the service providers is to account for the situation.
For the NCA, this increases the turnaround time for each customer, as the agents are saddled with the duty of capturing their biometric data and linking their Ghana Card Numbers to their phone numbers.
Nana Defie Badu indicated that congestion would be reduced if there is an adherence to the quota systems devised by the telecommunication companies.