A week after the implementation of the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy), the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications is warning that the SIM cards, as well as the devices of persons defrauding people using the E-Levy, will be blocked when they are found out.
According to reports from the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, some unscrupulous persons have started making money from the challenges that have surfaced following the implementation of the E-Levy.
The Chamber says these persons, who pose as staff of the Ghana Revenue Authority or the Telecommunication companies, call unsuspecting members of the public under the guise of helping them undo wrongful deductions, only to steal monies from the mobile money accounts of users.
The development comes as mobile money agents call on the implementing agencies to ramp up education to ensure the general public has an appreciable understanding of the E-Levy, the charges involved, and situations under which the users should expect to pay such charges.
In an interview with Citi Business News, the Chief Executive Officer of the Telecommunications Chamber, Dr. Ken Ashigbey urged the general public to ignore calls from persons claiming to be from the GRA and the Telcos, and rather call the police, GRA or their respective charging entities to report such persons.
“What will happen is that, immediately you report it and the charging entities investigate and find out that it is true, we will block that number and the number will be put on a fraud control dashboard so other charging entities will also block the device that they used. So not only will the SIM cards be taken out of the system, but their devices cannot be used with any network in Ghana.”
” Fortunately for us, we are on this platform with the Bank of Ghana, the cyber security authority and the police cyber fraud unit and when it comes to prosecution, it’s the police that has to handle it, so the other alternative is to report some of these to the police as well so that we can get to the bottom of this and get these people arrested,” he added.
