In a bid to tackle the unending menace of kidnapping in the country, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has unveiled plans to check the menace of using telecommunications devices.

The Commission in a statement made available to THISDAY, disclosed that the Acting Executive Vice Chairman/CEO of the Commission, Dr Bashir Gwandu, revealed that triangular tracking devices that can locate kidnappers can be acquired to stop the menace.

He said that telecoms operators will be given some form of subsidy to enable the operators install equipment on every mast and tower that could be used for triangulating between sites in order to identify real-geographical location of both GPS and Non-GPS-enabled Mobile handsets.

Dr Gwandu also said that SIM Card registration will also offers significant solution to the issue of kidnapping.

He said that once ownership of numbers can be identified, handsets can be tracked, and geographical location becomes identifiable, then, any call made to solicit for ransom by the kidnappers can be tracked.

The NCC boss added that apart from SIM-card registration, all GPS-enabled handsets can also be tracked by low earth orbit satellites. He said that there are other telecoms equipment that could be deployed to track and identify the locations of handsets being used to solicit for ransom.

The Acting Executive Vice Chairman lamented the problems of none registration of SIM Cards, stressing that “with just about N1000 a multitude of crimes can be committed by purchasing multiple SIM-cards and fraudulently use them to threaten others via voice or text messages and also commit other phone-assisted crimes.”

He said: “This has to stop, and we are working hard to stop it.” Read more here