Gov’t vows to fish out SIM box fraudsters

Minister of Communications Dr Edward Kofi Omane Boamah says government has developed an “elaborate strategy” to detect operators of SIM boxes, which are running down revenue expected from international calls.

Dr Omane Boamah said both electronic and human strategies have been adopted to fish out the sources of SIM-boxing criminals.

He was speaking on Monday, September 1 after a National Communications Authority (NCA) and MTN-Ghana collaboration resulted in the arrest of two persons suspected to be operating SIM boxes in Accra.

Their operations are said to have cost the country $800,000 in the last six months.

“We are reaching out to a lot of Ghanaians who when they suspect such operations within their vicinity should not hesitate at all in terms of drawing the attention of security operators,” Dr Omane Boamah appealed.

He said SIM-boxing has resulted in the reduction of international calls from 100 million minutes per month to 60 million minutes.

Some of the telecommunication networks have promised to collaborate with government in bringing an end to the activities of the fraudsters.

“We have invested a lot of money to detect as well as locate where these SIM boxes are and prevent them from doing that particular bypass,” said Serame Taukobong, Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana.