{"id":21881,"date":"2011-04-01T11:58:49","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T15:58:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=21881"},"modified":"2011-04-01T11:58:49","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T15:58:49","slug":"president-koroma-angry-with-gsm-operators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=21881","title":{"rendered":"President Koroma angry with GSM operators"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Minister of Information and Communication, Alhaji Ibrahim Ben Kargbo has told journalists about President Koroma\u2019s disgust over the sale of GSM SIM Cards to street vendors.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Minister made this disclosure during the usual press briefing at the conference room of the Ministry of Information and Communication, Thursday 31<sup>st<\/sup> March 2011.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">While expanding on the need for GSM operators to register their SIM cards, the communication minister cited instances where the cards have been sold to members of the public without registering them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He said President Koroma was particularly angry when he arrived at the Lungi International Airport one morning to find vendors selling unregistered SIM cards to the public.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The minister outlined the security implication of the non-registration of SIM cards, citing the plane load of cocaine that landed at our airport in August 2009.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He said one of the suspects had over thirty calls in his mobile phone. \u201cWe could have easily traced the callers if the GSM operators had registered their SIM cards at that time,\u201d he lamented.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He therefore used the occasion to appeal to GSM users to register their SIM card in the interest of national security, noting that only 65% of mobile phone users have registered their SIM cards.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Other issues he dwelt on related to the introduction of the metric system in business transaction which takes effect 1<sup>st<\/sup> May 2011.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He said the new measurement system is in line with other ECOWAS member countries that have converted to the metric system, adding that Sierra Leone will soon be using litre instead of gallon when buying fuel, for example.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cInstead of pound, we\u2019ll be using kilo in our business transaction,\u201d the minister disclosed.<\/p>\n<p><em>By Foday Marrah<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Minister of Information and Communication, Alhaji Ibrahim Ben Kargbo has told journalists about President Koroma\u2019s disgust over the sale of GSM SIM Cards to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[671,673,1],"tags":[3921,1055,5492,3320],"class_list":["post-21881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-national-news","category-uncategorized","tag-gsm-operators","tag-president-ernest-bai-koroma","tag-sierra-leone-news","tag-sim-registration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}