On the issue of SIM cards linked to unknown numbers

The Center for Public Opinion & Awareness (CenPOA) has noted with great worry complaints by sections of the general public that their SIM cards are linked to unknown numbers.

The national SIM re-registration exercise was a very important undertaking which received support and participation of most Ghanaians because of its anticipated benefits, even though the process was fraught with challenges.

It is also important to remember that during the registration period, some Ghanaians and civil society actors expressed skepticism about the process and publicly declared their doubts about the integrity and security of the data which were being collected by third-party telecos.

In response to our request on December 5, 2022, to the National Communications Authority (NCA) for information regarding the total number of SIM registrations which had been conducted as of November 30, 2022, it was revealed that 22,443,323 SIM cards had been successfully registered with 8,759,090 deactivated.

We understand that these 22,443,323 individual registrations may include multiple SIM cards linked to a single individual.

However, for an individual’s identification to be linked to unknown numbers goes to prove that there were either system errors or a manipulation of the system. We only hope that the former is true because the latter will mean that the SIM registration exercise may have been an effort of futility.

Moreover, the recently announced short code of *400# for checking the number of SIM cards registered to an ID is a laudable initiative and can be considered as some form of data cleaning. It may however raise serious issues about the integrity of the whole national biometric SIM registration exercise if incidents of unknown numbers linked to people’s ID cards become too many beyond scientifically acceptable thresholds. It will only mean that the quality of the SIM registration data has been compromised.

We appreciate the importance your ministry attached to the biometric SIM re-registration exercise and the zealousness with which you conducted the whole process. We also hope that your ministry, in equal measure of importance and zeal, will take steps to address this issue which has the potential to derail the exemplary success and already visible positive impacts of the SIM re-registration exercise.

As a public interest, non-partisan, and non-governmental civic organization, CenPOA will continue to work to hold public authorities accountable to the people whom they have been appointed to serve.