Ghana Card boycott: 'You listen to the NDC at your own peril' - Ursula

Minister of Communication and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has blamed the National Democratic Congress, NDC, for challenges recorded in the acquisition of Ghana Cards.

She cited a press release through which the party asked members to boycott the registration process.

She lamented that those that obeyed the directive she described as an 'anti-social call' had themselves to blame. “The NDC vociferously opposed the

Read full article.Ghana Card registration and called on all their supporters to boycott the process.

"Those who heeded that anti-social call and refused to register are now feeling the effect of it. You listen to the NDC at your own peril,” the Minister said at a press conference.

The Ghana Card is the sole identification document for the re-registration of SIM cards, which process was scheduled to end yesterday.

Ursula, while addressing the media on Sunday, said she “reluctantly” extended the exercise owing to challenges such as the delays in the rollout of a self-serving registration app as well as delays in the acquisition of Ghana Cards.

“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 pogramme will be extended to 30th September to end on the anniversary of its commencement. That will give us one full year of SIM registration to 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 fully receiving certain services including voice and data services.

"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,” the minister stated.

The SIM card registration exercise began on 31st October 2021 and was expected to end on 31st March 2022 but as of 17th March, over 14 million SIM cards had been linked to the Ghana Card with over 10 million Bio-Captures conducted and 99,445 new SIMs registered.

Due to a number of factors including the fact that over 7.5 million citizens and residents were yet to obtain Ghana Cards to enable them register their SIM cards, it was clear the deadline for completion of the registration of the remaining active SIM cards could not be met.

As a result, the ministry extended the deadline to July 31, 2022. However reports from multiple media outlets including GhanaWeb indicated that as of Saturday, July 30, thousands have either not registered their Ghana Card or SIM cards.

This led to several calls on the government and the ministry to cause an extension to the July 31 deadline.