BY NED GAGAHE
Telecommunication Commission Solomon Islands (TCSI) Commissioner Calvin Ziru says the country’s lack of ‘a national identity system’ is a huge challenge faced in developing SIM card registration.
Ziru stated this during the launch of mandatory SIM card registration last week.
He said the two challenges faced were lack of national identity data base and the need for policies and laws to complement SIM card registration.
“A few challenges down the road in terms of what we could do. Some of the challenges two in particular, that we found in this endeavor, or at least in our attempts to register SIM cards. Firstly, we didn’t have a national identity system or database. And that that seems to be a major problem for us.
“When you were talking about how you register what documentation you will be, what evidence would be provided by people from Honiara and people from the province, in terms of who they are, birth certificates, the accuracy of that, that were major issues.
“We considered numerous ways of trying to even post passage of the Act of trying to ensure that it was easy and streamlined for our citizens, looking at options of the biometric voter registration card, NPF and driver’s licenses.
“So, what you would have is different identity systems within different departments of the government as well as the non-government sector, that really could allowed us to have a better process and a much cleaner process in terms of how we can register SIM card.
“Secondly, SIM card registration really needed to be complemented, rather, by policies or laws that would strengthen cyber security frameworks, and Solomon Islands needed to look at that.” Commissioner Ziru said.
