Story: Rueben SACKEY

The Minister of Communication and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has served a notice to all mobile phone users to take advantage of the SIM re-reregistration exercise instituted by the government or risk losing their numbers.

She explained that without any biases, they would  deactivate all such SIMs that would  not be  registered by March 2022, when the process would have ended.

“Let me just give a gentle reminder that all unregistered SIMs will be deactivated at the end of the registration exercise and we mean it; we will enforce the law to the letter. Don’t blame me if your phone (sic) is blocked. You were warned,” she said.

Ursula Owusu-Ekuful was speaking at the Official Launch of the National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2021, the Launch of the Ghana Cyber Security Authority, and the Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) Directive in Accra when she made these comments

The re-registration of SIM cards in the country officially started  on October 1, 2021, and is expected to end after six months; March 2022.

Meanwhile, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has hailed the collective work of stakeholders in the cybersecurity sector that has seen Ghana move from 32.6 per cent in cybersecurity rankings in 2017 to 86.69 today.

She explained that with a conscious effort to make Ghana’s ranking in the space better, they had been working tirelessly in achieving this feat, contributing also to the cybersecurity act in 2020.

“The passage of the act in 2020 is indeed a milestone achievement that has set us on the path to a safer and resilient eco-system; digitally. We all need to familiarize ourselves with that law and that’s why this month has been set aside to conduct education and interactions with all sectors of the economy that are impacted by cybersecurity issues.

“I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the enormous contributions and the relentless efforts of our stakeholders in accomplishing this feat which has gained us international recognition,” she said.