Uganda Communication Commission (UCC) has said that in 7 days from today, they will switch off all SIM cards that were registered without using the National Identification cards, passports or certified documents by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).
The 7-day ultimatum was announced Tuesday during a joint press conference by UCC executive director, Mr Godfrey Mutabazi, and Gen Kale Kayihura, the Inspector General of Police.
“Registered service subscribers should be re-verified using the national IDs. This is the evidence one must produce as a legitimate SIM card user. All SIM cards that won’t be revalidated after the seven days will be deactivated immediately,” Mr Mutabazi said at UCC head offices at Bugolobi.
He noted that foreigners will have to use passports, and refugees certified documents by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) during registration.
“Mobile phones have become weapons in the hands of criminals however, the guidelines will ensure technological advancements are not abused by wrongdoers” Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kale Kayihura said.
According to Private news publisher Daily Monitor, the re-registeration order by the IGP was “intended to curb criminality that has been aided by using unregistered telephone numbers.”
The newspaper reports that Mr Anthony Katamba, the general manager of corporate services at MTN Uganda, said they were not aware of the new guidelines and described it as a hurried move, which did not take into consideration the 23m telecom subscribers in the country.
The communications regulatory body did not reveal figures of how many Ugandans are unregistered using the documents revealed during this meeting. However, at least 52.3 per cent of Ugandans have access to mobile phones, according to UCC’S 2014 Access and usage of communication services study across the country.
This translates into more than 19.5 million Ugandans connected to different mobile telecommunications networks. MTN and Airtel have the biggest share with more than 17 million users split between them.
This number is predicted to have increased over the past few years.
