Ghana has become a strange country, where we bring strange processes, even when technology can address it.
The Ministry of Communications commenced the re-registration of Sim Cards on October 1, this year. According to the Ministry, the exercise will last till March 2022 and it is intended to curb the mobile phone fraud menace.
But the process of re-registration is so cumbersome, we begin to wonder whether our leaders have the citizenry at heart.
The following is the process one has to go, in order to register their sim card.
1. Dial the short code *404#
2. Enter Ghana Card Pin ( Note: Enter letters and figures without hyphens)
3. Confirm Ghana Card Pin
4. Enter Surname
5. Enter First Name(s)
6. Enter Date of Birth (Format: DDMMYYYY)
7. Select Sex
8. Confirm Details
9. Submit Details Provided After Confirmation
As if this process is not tedious enough, when you are done, you are to visit the nearest office of your service provider to complete an already laborious process.
In the considered opinion of this newspaper, the whole process around the Sim Card re-registration, has not been thought through well. In this era of self service applications , as a newspaper we do not understand why anyone should be asked to be present in person to retake his or her biometrics which has already been captured by the National Identification Authority for the issuance of the Ghana card.
Majority of phones Ghanaians use, have biometrics. A simple application would allow one to capture at least three finger prints using the phone and together with the Ghana card number, all one has to do is to send for verification, and when a match is found, then the sim is registered.
A visit to any of the mobile telecommunication service providers, especially MTN, will reveal a scary picture of people queuing from morning to evening just to go through the process of re-registration. Technology is supposed to make our life easy, but our leaders have made sure we have to suffer for everything, including even queuing to attend to nature’s call.
