The Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation has said it finds it disturbing that about 10 million people who have linked their SIM cards to their Ghana card in the stage 1 of the re-registration exercise, are yet to complete their stage 2 registration.

"It is, however, disconcerting that almost 10 million people who have linked their SIM cards to their Ghana cards (i.e. completed stage 1 registration) have not completed their stage 2 registration," the Ministry said in a statement issued on Monday, 17 October 2022.

According to the Ministry, "there is no excuse for this, since these individuals have their Ghana cards, have started the process and had ample opportunity to fully register their SIM cards, including through the use of the self-registration app which is the first of its kind in the world."

It reminded those opposed to the SIM card registration exercise for either "ideological, philosophical or politial reasons," that they may be exercising "their right to opt out of this exercise but all actions have consequences.

"All unregistered SIM cards will be deactivated."

It referred to Regulation 1(b)of the Subscriber Identity Module Registration Regulations, 2011 (L.I 2006), which states: “A network operator or service provider shall not activate a Subscriber Identity Module for a subscriber unless the subscriber complies with the directives given by the Authority under the Act and the National Communications Authority Act, 2008, (Act 769) on the registration of Subscriber Identity Module.”

The ministry noted: "This imposes a legal obligation on all network operators to activate only SIMs registered in the manner prescribed by the NCA on their network.

"Any SIM which is not duly registered, in accordance with NCA directives, cannot be activated on any network in Ghana."

It added: "The Authority, NCA, therefore, has the power to issue directives detailing the entire procedure for SIM registration and to impose penalties/sanctions for noncompliance with the directives."

Meanwhile, 28,959,006 SIM cards across the country have been linked to Ghana cards, as part of the first stage of the registration exercise, representing 67.28 per cent of the 42,749,662 total SIM cards issued nationally.

"18,930,664 SIM cards have been fully registered," as both stages 1 and 2 have been completed, "representing 44.28 per cent of the total SIM cards issued. This equates to 69.64 per cent of all stage 1 registrations," the Ministry disclosed in a statement.

Also, "13,720,687 unique counts of Ghana cards have been used so far for the registration exercise."