Leading Mobile Telecommunication Company in Ghana, MTN has cautioned its customers and all Ghanaians not to purchase pre-registered SIM cards.

According to management of MTN, dealers who engage in the act commit an offence liable for prosecution and therefore has asked its customers to desist from such acts.

Speaking at the 2018 MTN Editors Forum at Golden Bean Hotel in Kumasi, the Acting Cooperate Services Executive, Mr. Samuel Koranteng, admitted the telecommunications chamber was aware of the situation and has notified the security agencies to cause the arrest of fraudulent agents who register SIM cards before selling them out.

“What these fraudulent agents are doing is that; they are pre-registering the SIMs which by the way is an offence. There are laws against pre-registration of SIM cards before you sell them, so it’s a concern for us. What MTN is doing is that; at the back end, on a daily basis, we review registrations that come into our system…we have set out various technology filters to detect these fault and bad registrations and carry out deletions”, he explained.

He said, the Electronic Communications Amendment Acts [Act 2016] clearly outlines certain penalty points, including prison terms, for agents who register mobile SIM cards before selling them out to customers.

“It’s an offence for everyone to deal in pre-registering of SIM cards… the law clearly states it’s a criminal offence”, he indicated.

He urged all ‘cherished customers and the good people of Ghana’ to report such person to the police.

Pre-registration is often done by the vendors of the sims which in the end, prevents the tracking of the true details of the owner of the sim card.

Mr. Koranteng further admonished customers to register SIM cards in their names using nationally recognized identity cards (IDs), because according to him, ‘buying a pre-registered SIM card out of rush could land you in trouble’.

“As a customer, always be sure to register SIM card with your own ID, because in the future when there’s a problem, you the card bearer would be traced and could land you into trouble. More so, because of the digital and data financial services migration, it would not be of any benefit for any customer to use a SIM card that is not registered in his/her name. It’s an offence”, he warned.

He reiterated MTN as a network operator, will do it best to ensure every SIM card is registered by the required owner.

“The problem for us as a network operator is that we need to ensure the card bearer is the owner”, he assured.

Source: Eric Nana Prekoh / Ghanaguardian.com