The Ashanti Regional Branch of the Ghana Blind Union is pushing for an alternative SIM card re-registration services for persons for persons with disability (PWDs), especially the visually impaired.
The Union says it has received complaints from its members who lament the ill-treatment they endure at some registration centers, posing them to serious dangers.
In November last year, the government, through the Ministry of Communication and Digitalization rolled out a SIM card re-registration exercise which is expected to end in March 2022.
The exercise is to curb SIM Boxing and other criminal activities perpetrated by fraudsters using fake SIM cards. A visit to some registration centers in the nation’s capital by dailymailgh.com, saw frustrated subscribers forming long queues and in some cases ignoring health protocols.
But the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the Ghana Blind Union, George Kyerematen who shared similar concerns fears many of their members risk losing their existing contact numbers as deadline for the exercise nears.
“The current happenings at the registration centers is a great disadvantage to us in the sense that when we go there we join queues and a lot of our members have been complaining about that. I have contacted the Telcos to consider us but it appears we have run out of options”, Kyerematen said adding: “My appeal is that they have to give persons with disabilities (PWDs) the special treatment when we visit these centers or even register us at our homes using phones”.
Mr. Kyerematen raised these concerns when management and staff of Asaase Broadcasting Company Limited, a parent company of Asaase Radio in Kumasi donated assorted items to members of the Ghana Blind Union.
Items donated include bags of rice, cooking oil, margarine, detergent, among others.
Mr. Kyerematen, who received the items on behalf of the Union was grateful to Asaase Radio for the kind gesture.
Head of Programmes at Asaase Radio in Kumasi Naa Klordey Fritzel Abban said: The Ghana Blind Union wrote to us for aid ahead of the yuletide and we saw the need to help them; we saw the need as a brand and Asaase decided to come to their aid. As a brand with a corporate social responsibility, any group or individual who contacts our office for such interventions will be given the attention. “
“Asaase is here to impact, to educate and to inform… We have just been around in a year and the impact has been felt. And so people should tune in for more of such”, she added.
SOURCE: DAILY MAIL GH
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