The Minister appeared before Parliament to answer questions with regard to the defaulted subscribers that have been blocked.

She told the House that out of the over 49 million SIM cards at the start of the exercise, there are currently 29,947,561 active SIM cards.

“Mr. Speaker, so far, 28,948,142 SIM cards have been fully registered while 999,419 SIM cards have been exempted and so the total active SIM cards are 29,947,561. At the start of the exercise, our information was that there were 42,416,459 SIM cards out of which 7,995,679 have been unregistered and blocked while 4,473,219 SIM cards have been deleted and removed.”

She further disclosed that the final deadline given to subscribers increased the number of registrations within the period.

“Since the final deadline, increased activity indicates that some of these blocked SIM cards are being reactivated following the completion of all necessary processes, however, it is important to note that not all the blocked SIMs are expected back on the network as some of these SIM cards were being used for fraud.”

“I was also informed that almost 280,000 merchant SIM cards have not been registered,” the Minister added.