Comments

Hi Albert and all, Amanda has made very good observation and I supposed anything that should happen in a country is based on law and mobile phone companies I hope are registering SIMS as required under law. if there is no law people have right to complain. However if there is a written law people have no choice but laws must be enforced and people have to comply. I hope mobile phone companies are adhering to requirements of the law. regards john

Thank you for this article Dr. Watson, it shares a lot of the same questions I've raised but also gives good examples of how this process has worked or has been changed to better suit the needs and capability of a country. It would have been interesting to have some how brought together the NID process and sim registration exercise if it were possible, some sort of link, looking at the amount of detail being given to service providers such as Digicel.

Thanks for the rich insights about the complexities of the SIM card registration system. It's a good summary of issues that need to be addressed if the system is to work fairly and effectively.

I guess Telikom registers its users when they purchase a SIM card (I registered before I bought one). Rwanda deactivated 485,000 SIM cards after extending due dates for registration, and I wrote to The National newspaper arguing that January 20 would not work for rural communities. As you point out, SIM Card registration doesn't reduce crime. There's no empirical evidence. When revoking the mandatory SIM card registration in three years later the report from Mexican authorities stated that registration of SIM card did not help in "investigation and or prosecution of associated crimes." United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Romania and New Zealand have considered mandating SIM card registration but opted against. I am not surprised by PNG government's haphazard decision to make SIM card registration mandatory. The government has a reputation of initiating ambitious projects without proper research. NID is only popular with working class population in urban areas because of threats like "No NID, No Pay" announcement by Minister for National Planning (and for identification purpose for obtaining travel doc or banks requirements for the new birth certificates issued with NID) Instead of making registration mandatory, the government should be improving services (e-Commerce/m-Commerce) that require use of mobile phone services. This would encourage SIM card holders to voluntarily register. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sim-card-registration-png-should-adopt-global-best-practice-kabuni/?published=t

Hi Joyce. Thanks for taking the time to read my post and share a comment. The decision to extend the deadline was made by Sam Basil, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and Energy, on advice from NICTA, which is the regulatory body. I wasn't involved in organising the deadline, but I welcome it. As you say, there are many mobile phone users around the country who need more time to register their SIM cards. Thanks again Joyce. Amanda 🙂

Thanks Amanda for doing such a lovely job in getting dates extended as many users around the country did not register their sim cards.

Hi Amanda, thanks for the piece and also background literature on countries who and adopted mandatory SIM registrations and have worked and not worked for them. me, like others have already registered SIMS and are discouraged by the literature that is currently coming out on the pros and cons...but thanks!!

Reforms should also consider addressing the growing demand for people (or healers) who claim to have supernatural powers to assist the so called victims of sorcery find the sorcerers or causes of harms. The existence of such "good" people have also given rise to the belief.

The Pacific Island countries have two major challenges, among others; (1) less natural resources to develop and generate income; (2) a growing population that the individual country is not able to cater for adequately. Descending from the above two challenges, the Pacific countries needs very much support from other countries to meet some of their short and long-term needs. In that scenario, Australia and New Zealand were there in front most of the time providing much of the needed support. While the Pacific countries are more exposed to the world, their aspirations and dreams also create more demands than how much their government would afford. On the other end, Australia and New Zealand also need to move away or into different ways of doing business with the Pacific countries. Now, the opportunity for Pacific countries to look elsewhere for support is becoming a reality. That is when China became a convenient figure in the minds of the Pacific countries, not that they dislike Australia or New Zealand. What the Australia Minister for International Development and Pacific denounced and criticized China for is not of China's making but the nature of the two challenges faced by Pacific countries discussed above. The Pacific casual labour mobility scheme is not the solution nor will help improve what the Minister has denounced but is a short-term measure. There would be more that Australia and New Zealand could do to maintain the traditional leadership approach in the Pacific.

PNG has evolved from traditional ethnic groupings with 800 plus diversities into a more loosely integrated society coming out of age since 1975. Categorically describing, PNG as an entity of dispossession and inequality would not hold much truth but a defensive work by someone to contest his/her belief. We are here to build capacity, would mean nothing to a traditional PNG ethno dwellers in the 1970s than today PNG. Looking back, early PNG ethno groups knew how to mobilise as social groups, do gardening and hunting so building capacity would mean nothing to them; is it to do with their traditional daily chores or introducing something new that they will adopt. That book by Paige West on PNG needs to be contested at some points with regard to pre and post 1975 views on PNG. PNG traditional society are some of the civilized society of the early human era, dispossession and inequality was never the norms, even in today's PNG society. PNG people belong to a nation, a society, a community and an ethno clan group, they belong to something that you cannot find it in many other countries and nations. PNG has possession and equality too.

Sean, Read my postscript.

But there is a deputy secretary responsible for development- currently Ewan McDonald