A former Deputy Minister of Communications, George Andah, has asked the National Identification Authority (NIA) to provide additional ways for people to be able to obtain their GhanaCard in order to make the ongoing SIM re-registration exercise smooth.
He said the NIA must do more to clear the backlog of persons yet to obtain their card after going through the exercise.
“I think that we all need to move away from the barrier that we are putting in place of using national ID card. There are reasons why we are using the Ghana Card. The law makes it clear that the Ghana Card is the primary document for the identification.
“I will urge the NIA to do more than it is doing to clear the backlog of the people accessing their Ghana card,” he said on the Key Points on TV3 Saturday July 30.
For his part, the Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram, Samuel Nartey George attributed most of the challenges in the SIM registration to system inefficiency.
He noted that some persons unable to link their Ghana Card to the SIM. When they attempt to do, they receive the invalid input notification.
Also, he said, there are long queues at the registration centers making it cumbersome for people to register.
“You haven’t resolved all these and you are going to punish them for your inefficiency, is that not arbitrary? Is that not capricious?” He also asked on the same show.
Sam George earlier indicated that the Minority in Parliament is not against any initiative by the government to provide a credible data base for persons holding identity cards in the country.
However, the opposition lawmakers, said they are against any attempt to illegally carry out what is supposed to be a legal exercise.
Addressing a press conference in Parliament on Thursday July 28, he said “as a minority caucus, we are not against any policy initiative that seeks to provide a clean, credible, reliable data based for persons who hold SIM cards in our country and use same for transacting private or public business. However, we are against any attempt to illegally carry out what should be a legal mandate.”
Sam George earlier served notice to sue the government if it goes ahead to block unregistered SIM cards after the deadline.
“I therefore take to do so before the 31st of July,” she said.