The National Information and Communication Technology Authority, or NICTA, held its first regional workshop today (February 9) in Mt Hagen.
The one-day workshop is part of the SIM card registration awareness program, targeting subscribers in rural areas.
NICTA partnered with the PNG Council of Churches to help in rolling out SIM registration.
This regional workshop is the first of four regional workshops to be held throughout the country.
NICTA partnered with PNG Council of Churches, and funded K300, 000 for them to use their network and register its church members.
A way forward from this workshop is that Churches will submit names of their pastors to NICTA and the Telecommunication companies to train them to register subscribers.NICTA CEO, Charles Punaha says NICTA have partnered with the Churches to speed up the SIM registration process.
He said the Authority is facing challenge in delayed registration and the process needs to be done before the 2018 APEC meeting.
Digicel Company has 2.5 million subscribers; however, 1.5 million subscribers are yet to be registered.
Mr Punaha urged more people to register as all the information collected will be confidential.
If any telecommunication company is found to release personal information without proper police warrants, they will pay a K50, 000 fee. Among the Pastors who attended the workshop was Cardinal Sir John Ribat.
Cardinal Ribat told the participants that these are changes and developments to the society and we can only embrace them.
The workshop will continue on to the other regions in PNG.
