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The Minister of Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has issued a warning to Ghanaians who are refusing to link their SIM Cards with the Ghana Card to dodge the payment of qwik loans to service providers.
Addressing a press conference in Accra on Sunday, July 31, the Minister described such mentality as evil corruption and warned that people who engage in such acts will be found out and dealt with.
“I have also been informed that some people who have obtained qwik loans from their service providers have decided not to register those SIMs to avoid repaying the loans. That is evil corruption and you will be found out,” Ursula Owusu-Ekuful told the media today.
With thousands of Ghanaians yet to link SIM Cards with their Ghana card, the Communications and Digitalisation Minister further announced an extension of the deadline from July 31 to September 30.
“The Mobile Network Operators MNOs and the National Communications Authority (NCA) (and I dare say the National Identification Authority have all engaged additional staff, procured the necessary logistics and are incurring significant expenses to conduct this exercise successfully. Any extension of the process increases their cost. Upon consultation with the industry and in view of the challenges enumerated above, I have very reluctantly decided to grant a final conditional extension.
“The programme will be extended to 30th September to end on the anniversary of its commencement. That will give us one full year of SIM registration. It will be reviewed at the end of this month and any SIM that has not been fully registered by the end of August will be barred from receiving certain services including voice and data services,” the Minister indicated.
Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful added, “It will also be more expensive to use unregistered SIMs. The full range of punitive measures will be announced at another press briefing in September. Kindly do not blame your service provider when you suffer that fate due to your own inaction. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.”
