Politics

MPs reaction to SIM card registration is manifestation of segmented population – Sulemana Braimah asserts

Sulemana Braimah, Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), has described the reaction of Members of Parliament (MPs) regarding the ongoing SIM card registration as a manifestation of a segmented population.

“The reactions of MPs regarding the ongoing SIM card registration is a manifestation of system of beneficiaries and victims has segmented the population because agitation of the Minority MPs concerning flaws of SIM card registration exercise against the complicit silence of the Majority MPs demonstrates a clear division,” he decried.

According to Mr Braimah, what citizens are experiencing was manifestation of a system that had basically segmented the population into beneficiaries and victims and for those who are beneficiaries of the system, everything is fine but for those who are not beneficiaries everything is not fine.

The Minority in Parliament has urged the president to instruct Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the Minister of Communication and Digitalisation, to postpone the deadline for yet another time, the Mobile Money Agents Association of Ghana has equally pleaded with the government and the ministry to consider an extension of the exercise to January 2023.

This comes at a time when a number of Ghanaians are yet to receive their Ghana Cards from the National Identification Authority, without which their SIM cards cannot be registered which led to many of them besieging telecommunication outlets across the country in desperate attempt to register their SIM cards ahead of the deadline on July 31 but was extended to end of September.

Mr Braimah observed that attacks on journalists expecting them to be robot-like while reporting frustration of the ordinary Ghanaian with ongoing exercise was rather misplaced since those who may expect journalists to act like robots without emotions even though they know they were supposed to hold the government accountable and fundamental role of the media was to be watchdogs.

“The watchdog role does not mean give people the opportunity to ventilate their concerns but for us to be mouthpiece of ordinary people and those of us who are affected by challenges that are ongoing, and when we are into that cohort of beneficiaries and victims, the banter will continue to be there,” he lamented.

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