The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has announced a deadline of November 12 for the deactivation of all SIM cards that are not fully registered in accordance with the new regulatory guidelines.
According to the new guidelines, SIM card regularization requires registered owners to physically visit their respective telecom providers with their original IDs for thorough screening so that they capture their accurate data.
This information was revealed in a press briefing held at UCC headquarters in Kampala on Monday.
Abudu Salaam Waiswa, the head of legal affairs at UCC highlighted that this process is not for every customer on the data base but rather for those whose registration before wasn’t in accordance with the new regulations.
“This is because we have gone through different phases of registration, there people whose numbers are on the network now, but their bio-metrics don’t match with what is in the NIRA database that’s why we refer to this process as regularization as oppose to verification,” he explained.
Waiswa further detailed that this process is to help them streamline the database and to also ensure that after the deadline all the numbers will be in accordance with the requirements of the regulations.
These regulations also require that each National ID should have up to a limit of not more than 10 active SIM card from the same telecom company per holder.
On the issue of payments, Waiswa urged the general public to be vigilant and not to pay anyone money for this exercise and to also be mindful of some fraudsters who might call them demanding money to regularize their SIM cards because the process is free of charge.
In this process, Ugandan nationals are demanded to produce only the original identity cards for barcode scanning and thumbprint verification.
Waiswa also emphasized that individuals whose SIM cards may be deactivated need not to worry about losing their mobile money because even without having a verified number, their money will be safe and ready for removal after the re-activation process.
Lately, Uganda has more than 30 million registered SIM cards and of these less than 1 percent are non regularized.
The meeting was also attended by officials from Airtel Uganda and MTN Uganda who also affirmed their companies full compliance of these guidelines.