The National Identification Authority (NIA) has endorsed the government’s fresh SIM re-registration exercise, saying the previous process was flawed because it did not verify subscribers against national identity records.
Williams Ampomah Darlas, the authority’s Director of Corporate Affairs, said on Hot FM’s Morning Drive that the earlier exercise was carried out mainly between telecom operators and the communications ministry, without integrating the NIA’s biometric database.
He said proper identity verification was therefore not done. “When it comes to identification and verification, this is not how it’s done,” he said, explaining that the process largely captured images rather than matching them against a central national database.
Darlas said institutional disagreements at the time kept the NIA’s data out of the exercise, so the information collected did not match the authority’s records. He said preliminary checks during planning had shown clear discrepancies.
Under the new exercise, run jointly by the NIA, the Ministry of Communication and telecom operators, subscribers will first be verified using their Ghana Card before their biometric data, including photographs, are captured and matched against the NIA database for approval.
Darlas said integrating verified identity data would cut SIM-related fraud and improve traceability of people involved in crime. He added that the process was designed to be user-friendly, allowing people to register without necessarily visiting telecom offices and easing congestion.
Communications Minister Samuel Nartey George has driven the renewed exercise, calling the earlier registration carried out under the previous administration invalid. The government says re-registration will be free, and that about 80 percent of biometrics already collected have been cross-checked against NIA data.
