The Minority Caucus in Parliament says the blocking of unregistered Sim cards by the government was a backward regulatory policy.
According to the Caucus, the country, after realising the importance of telecommunications, embarked on an agenda to improve upon it, so any policy that barred people from accessing it was backward.
“To completely cut telecommunication services to subscribers for no other reason than to limit usage by citizens is the lowest point in a nation’s telecommunications development. It is a backward regulatory policy prescription to follow in any regime,” Minority Leader Mr. Haruma Iddrisu, who made this known to journalists at a news conference in Accra yesterday, said.
The comment was a reaction to the rolling out of some punitive actions by the National Communication Authority (NCA) against subscribers who had not registered their sim cards.
The action commenced on Monday September 5, as outgoing calls and data services of a section of these subscribers with unregistered Sim cards were blocked for two days.
This elicited lots of negative reactions from social media, especially those who were caught in the net.
But, speaking at yesterday’s news conference, the once former Minister of Communication in the erstwhile Mahama administration told journalists that the NCA’s lack of understanding of the essentiality of mobile phone had resulted in the implementation of such a policy.
Mr. Iddrisu noted that most people now relied on smart phone technology to seek medical treatment, locate family members, alert on an emergency, receive money from relatives abroad, and even find shelter.
“Mobile telephone (smart phone) is an essential emergency tool. Owning a cell phone has become regarded as a necessity in modern society. Great advances have been made with smart phone technology and most of us rely on our phones to help us in array of situations…”
Aside the policy being a retrogressive one, the Minority Leader again said that the act was also an infringement on the rights of the victims.
Making reference to Article 18(2) of the 1992 Constitution, which states: “No person shall be subjected to interference with the privacy of his home, property, correspondence or communication…”
Mr. Iddrisu said the act clearly violated one’s right to privacy of communication and, hence, condemned it.
“Today, digitalisation and ICT are directly tied to key Fundamental Rights, including the Right to Privacy and Communication ‘as no person’ should be subjected to interference with the privacy of his communication…
“In the conduct of the Sim re-registration exercise, basic rights have been overlooked. Communication is a right and opportunity must be given to every citizen to procure communication services,” he noted.
The Minority Leader said that the action of the Ministry of Communication and the NCA was acting ultra vires in curtailing the exercise and enjoyment of the right to privacy of communication, especially when the government had not provided enough platforms for people to procure the Ghana Card, which is a requirement for the Sim card registration.
He, therefore, called on the Communication Ministry and the NCA to “desist from treating the Communications Sector as personal fiefdoms at the peril of the country’s development. We expect more professional and insightful approach to the management of the sector to avoid further worsening of the sector.”
Meanwhile, the Minority Caucus on the Communication Committee of Parliament has called on the government to provide the requisite resources to the National Identification Authority (NIA) to accelerate the tempo of the ongoing Sim card re-registration.
The Caucus said the NIA should have more offices, recruit more staff, and purchase more materials to enable it function effectively.
