The CEO of the Chamber of Telecommunications, Dr. Ken Ashigbey, has said that affected persons whose SIM cards have been deactivated can reactivate their SIM cards and restore mobile service.
He said the first instructions provided to the telcos were to deactivate and delink the accounts of people who had not yet registered their SIM cards. However, the situation has apparently changed, and he claims that the impacted individuals have been given another chance to register.
When asked whether people whose mobile money accounts had been temporarily disabled would regain access once network connectivity was restored, he assured them that they would.
Dr. Ashigbey said that measures have been put in place to protect the money of people who would not have their telecommunications services restored.
“If you don’t restore, what is going to happen is that the Bank of Ghana has asked the EMIs who operate mobile money to put the money in an account aside so that with the right evidence, you’ll be able to go and get it,” he said.
The National Communications Authority has not given a deadline for retrieving the mobile money account, he warned, so if the affected parties don’t take advantage of this chance to retrieve it, they risk losing access to their mobile money account if the NCA decides to delink the numbers.
According to Dr. Ashigbey, in such a case, the only way that the affected persons may regain access to their mobile money account would be to re-register with their Ghana Cards. He also cautioned that “if the NCA decides that this window they’ve given, after a week, they’re going to stop it, what is going to happen is that it will block you forever. You will not have your number.”
The CEO of the Chambers of Telecommunications suggests that customers whose SIM cards have been deactivated take advantage of the grace period and re-register their SIM cards. Dr. Ashigbey also encouraged SIM users to report problems to the NCA so that they might be fixed.
