Vice President of IMANI-Africa, Bright Simon says the physical verification stage for the on-going sim cards registration is inefficient and can be breached easily.

According to IMANI, the major target for sim deactivation is those who have done stage one, not the stage two.

Speaking to Starr News the Vice President of IMANI-Africa, Mr. Selorm Branttie stated that it is necessary to mop up the numbers of those who are recalcitrant or unwilling to finalize the process so that their data could be consolidated.

“There are people who genuinely do not have their Ghana cards. Therefore, we are still yet to know what mechanisms they are going to use to determine whether they will block your line knowing well you have the Ghana card or not. It will be a more serious thing to have been done.

“Because if you do know you have a Ghana Card and your line is blocked then it possibly means you are just unwilling to align your data with their existing data. I believe that if someone has done the stage one for instance then it is clear that a person’s details should be merged with whatever existing details we had, to be able to build the gap without any physical verification,” he explained.

He further noted that the National Communication Authority (NCA) and the National Identification Authority (NIA) have implemented new ways of SIM Registration other than the physical verification method.

“The physical verification stage for example we have described several times as being inefficient as well as something that can be breached easily. So, it is either they just want to force people to use their app to register so they get money or I do not see reasons why they would want to go beyond that first point”.

Mr. Branttie however pinpointed some issues the NCA and the NIA are currently facing with the new methods of registration.

“There is also the issue about criminalities where people have been registering sim cards for others. The flaw that they themselves created allows people to try to bypass the system that way but when it comes to the actual verification. The physical registration where we would actually use the right equipment to verify fingerprints as in the authorized NIA-issued equipment should be the only way, any other way is just a waste of everyone’s time,” he stated.

Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM/Bernice Mensah