NCA Moves To Block Stolen Phones

By William Yaw Owusu

Friday, 18 August 2006
An eight-member task force has been set up by the National Communications Authority (NCA) to work out a system to render stolen mobile phone unusable in the country.

The committee which has two weeks to submit a report has representatives from the NCA, mobile phone operators and the police.

Inaugurating it, Major John Tandoh (rtd), acting Director-General of NCA, noted that the social menace of mobile phone theft has assumed alarming proportions in recent times, and said "We need to move to check the situation."

He said the task force would consider measures that the mobile phone network operators could use to ensure that stolen phones could never be used in Ghana."

It will also put in place procedures to educate the public on the need to register their phones with the service operators and report lost phones to them.

Major Tandoh advised those who decode mobile phones for criminals to desist from the practice because "such phones can no longer be used in Ghana."

David Asante-Apeatu, Director General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), said 90 per cent of robberies in the country are aided by the use of mobile phones.

He said mobile phone snatching especially in the cities had become the order of the day, adding that "In the Accra metropolis alone, 151 street robberies occurred within this year, 95 per cent of which involved the theft of cell phones."

"When the system is operational we will work in collaboration with our neighbouring countries to ensure that these criminals do not send the stolen phones there" he said, adding that the essence is to make it less lucrative for people to attack others for their phones.