The Minister of Communication, Digital Technology, and Innovations, Sam George, has reiterated that the government will roll out a new nationwide SIM registration exercise by the first quarter of 2026, declaring that the previous process carried out under the former administration was invalid.
Speaking in an interview on TV3, the minister said the earlier exercise failed to meet the required authentication standards because subscriber information was not properly verified through biometric cross-checking.
The registrations that were purported to have been done by Ursula Owusu and the NPP did not cross-reference the biometrics they took from you against that database. Nothing of that sort was done,” he stated.
The Minister revealed that a new Legislative Instrument (L.I.) to guide the exercise has been completed and will soon be laid before Parliament. He stressed that the upcoming registration will be grounded in clear legal authority and rigorous verification processes.
“The L.I. is ready… First quarter next year, we will run it out. We are currently at the Public Procurement Authority doing the procurement of the service provider to do the SIM registration,” he said.
“There must be a proper legal basis for what we are doing.”
Mr. George clarified that the upcoming exercise is not a re-registration, insisting that the previous one was ineffective.
“We are not doing a re-registration. We are doing a SIM registration. You didn’t do any registration; the former Minister just wasted everybody’s time,” he remarked.
He disclosed that the Ministry has been working closely with the Interior Ministry, the National Communications Authority (NCA), the National Identification Authority (NIA), and telecommunications companies to integrate their systems.
“All the biometrics they collected were just sitting in databases scattered all over the place. We have picked those databases, and we are now cleaning them up and cross-referencing them with the NIA in the backend. About 80 per cent of them have been done,” he noted.
The new SIM registration is expected to tighten identity verification, enhance digital security, and improve the integrity of Ghana’s telecommunications system.
