THE National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers, NATCOMS, has urged the Minister of Communication Technology to save subscribers’ lines from being blocked.

The association, which made the appeal in a statement by its National President, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, said the minister should intervene by ordering the National Communications Commission, NCC, to provide a three-month final warning extension to subscribers.

Ogunbanjo, who commended the commission for the initial extension of the SIM card registration to June 30, 2013, said a lot of subscribers would be locked out due to no fault of theirs.

He said: “During the SIM registration, some registration agents were not collecting the full details needed because of the rush by the agents to register as many subscribers.

“Some registration agents were asking subscribers to pay N100 before registration, a situation that discourages subscribers.

“Some of them, even when they were agents of a particular network operator, collected other operators’ SIM cards for registration to shore up the number of SIM cards they registered daily”.

He said to ensure that every subscriber was given fair consideration, the minister should use her good offices to give Nigerian subscribers more time to enable them register their SIM cards, so they could receive calls.