Director of Consumer and Corporate Affairs at the National Communications Authority (NCA), Nana Defie Badu has said that from May 31, 2023, Stage 1 of the ongoing SIM Registration will be completely abolished following the deletion of the 11 million bad SIMs.
She said NCA’s monitoring has showed that Stage 1 is the main avenue by which “unscrupulous agents” are defrauding the process, so from May 31, 2023 the process will be limited to the use of the App and no more the use of the *404# at Stage 1.
Nana Badu was speaking on Atinka TV’s Oman mu Nsem hosted by Nana Owuahene Acheampong in a one-on-one interview about the ongoing SIM Registration process.
The SIM Registration process has been hit by significant fraudulent SIM registrations, where some “unscrupulous agents” are linking multiple SIM cards to the Ghana Cards of people without the consent of the Ghana Card owners.
There have been several reports of some Ghana Cards having been linked to up to 18 SIM cards without the consent of the Ghana Card owners.
Industry watchers have argued that the main avenue by which the “unscrupulous agents” get access to people’s Ghana Card details is the Stage 2 of the process, where applicants go to either telcos or their agents for their Ghana Card details and Biodata to be captured.
Stage 1 is where the individual links his or her SIM card to the Ghana Card by him/herself via *404# without going to show the Ghana Card details to any telco staff or agent, so the risk of exposing one’s Ghana Card details to an agent is highly limited.
But Nana Badu said it is rather the Stage 1 that the unscrupulous agents are taking advantage of to defraud the process.
She explained that the unique code that is generated at Stage 1 after the linkage, comes from National Identification Authority (NIA) to establish ownership of the Ghana Card. So, when agents get hold of the that code from one applicant, they use it to link other SIM cards to that particular Ghana Card without the consent of the actual owner.
Nana Badu further stated that the agents were able to do that because the telcos had asked permission from the NCA to allow their agents who did not have smartphones to continue using the old (legacy) system to register new SIMs on condition that those new SIMs will then be registered via the new system after activation.
She however noted that, in spite of that proviso, the telcos and their agent to undue advantage of the fact that the NCA had no direct eye on old system of registration to abuses that special regime, so it has been suspend. But the harm is already done, and that explains why some 053 numbers on MTN for instance, are even among fraudulently registered SIMs.
”You also notice that a lot of the fraudulently registered SIMs are numbers is close succession to each other which means the telcos were aware of it and they know which agents did that but they kept quiet about it until now that the public is reacting,” she said.
According to her, the good thing is that after using the confirmation codes to link SIM cards fraudulently, the agents were unable to continue the process to Stage 2 because the system would have flagged such SIMs at Stage 2.
”So between now and May 31, 2023 SIM holders can continue to use Stage 1 to start the SIM registration process, but beyond that date Stage 1 will be completely abolished and the process will be limited to the use of the App only,” she said.
She also said that ahead of the May 31, the telcos are under instructions to register completely new SIM cards only with the App and no more the Stage 1.
Nana Badu said so far, some of the agents who have been identified as having been involved in the fraud, have been removed completely from the process.
She however assured Ghanaians that none of the Ghana Cards fraudulently linked to SIM cards have been compromised in anyway, in that once the Ghana Card owner uses *402*1# to detect the fraudulent SIM, he or she can report for it to be delinked and the Ghana Card details remains intact.
She also explained that verification with the NIA database is only limited to Stage 1, to establish the Ghana Card ownership; but Stage 2 is strictly for creating the central SIM register as required by law, in the same way every state institution is enjoined by law to have a database.
“We are not required by law to verify the data we collect at Stage 2 with the NIA database. We use it to build a central SIM Register. NCA is enjoined by law to have a centralized SIM Register which is what Stage 2 does and the data kept at the National Information Technology Agency (NITA),” she explained.
Nana Badu said following the deletion of the 11 million bad SIM cards and the abolishment of the Stage 1, NCA will work with the telcos to clean their individual SIM registers before feeding that data into the central SIM Register to ensure the country indeed has a robust SIM Register.
This is consistent with an earlier statement by the NCA Director-General, Joe Anokye that the NCA will do an audit of the telcos’ SIM Register after the deletion of the 11 million SIMs on May 31.
Earlier on, the NCA has deleted 6.1 million SIM card, a lot of which are said to be SIM cards fraudulently linked to Ghana Cards at Stage 1, but could not complete the process to Stage 2.
