Government has announced plans to gazette 50 centres across the country for the replacement and issuance of new sim cards.
It follows a move by the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) last week to hand over a total of 50 Identity Card readers to communications regulator, UCC that will be used for verification of applicant’s identification details.
Accordingly, a Cabinet meeting held on Monday reached a decision to establish 50 centres where simcard issuance and replacement will be conducted.
The exercise set to resume next week will jointly be overseen by the various telecom service providers and UCC.
While briefing the press on Tuesday on the outcome of yesterday’s Cabinet decisions, the Deputy government spokesperson, Col Shaban Bantariza said that move is meant to eliminate the cumbersome procedure that was recently set out for those requiring new simcards or to swap them.
“Those simcard readers belong to government and they have been given to UCC by NIRA. And we are going to establish sim registration centres. The simcard readers are only for synchronization of identity,” he said.
He added: “So, if you come to the centre, and presented your I.D, they give you a form, the question is – Is that I.D yours or not? Does NIRA recognize that that’s you or that’s an authentic ID and it belongs to you?”
Bantariza said that details of the gazetted centres have not been worked out but he said they must be at the convenience of UCC and telcos. He, however, clarified that the centres will not be controlled by the telcos but all the relevent agencies including government.
“I can’t say where exactly the centres will be placed because that will come out from discussions from the telcos and UCC. But I can say they will be managed both by telcos and UCC,” he said.
This announcement comes five weeks after UCC ordered telecommunications service providers operating in Uganda to stop the issuance of new simcards until they had acquired the interface software to verify customer identification.
“We are saying that without these solutions, the operator should not be selling simcards. No more use of photocopied identity cards and whoever needs a new simcard must visit the service centre in person,” Mutabazi told journalists at a news conference on March 9.
However, late last month, UCC reversed the directive and instead set fresh guidelines.
Under the guidelines, those intending to replace or swap their sim cards were required to provide a valid police report, and a letter from NIRA verifying and validating that his or her national ID is valid.
But on Tuesday, Bantariza said the new process will disregard the earlier lengthy procedure.
Regarding the adequacy of only 50 centres to cover the entire country, Bantariza said that this was government’s initial plan and will be scaled up in the due course depending on their performance.
“It’s always important to chew what you can swallow. We have started with the 50 centres and depending on how they perform, that will give us the impetus to replicate it outward to make it easy for everybody to do business,” he said.
The stringent interventions by UCC come in the wake of increased insecurity partly attributed to the loopholes in the tracking of simcards that have recently been used to perpetrate crime.
