UCC says 11m Simcards so far registered
In less than two weeks, deadline of simcard registration will expire and a total of 11.36 million simcards have so far been validated between the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) and the telecom service providers since the process of simcard verification began, NIRA officials have said.
During a Press Conference today, NIRA Director of ICT, Clet Turiho said that out of the 13 million of the requests sent to NIRA from telecoms, 11.36 million have been validated.
This implies that the 11.36 million simcard were found to have information tallying with the users’ National Identity card details.
There are approximately 22 million registered active simcards in Uganda, according to Eng. Godfrey Mutabazi, the Uganda Communications Commission Executive Director. He described the progress in the simcard registration exercise as ‘positive’, saying 70% of the active simcards had been validated and successfully registered by last week.
“We have about 22 million simcard users. But remember that some individuals have more than one simcard while some companies and organizations also have up to 50 simcards,” Mutabazi said.
“It is therefore not correct to equate the 22 million simcards with the 11 million individuals since many have several simcards.”
UCC maintains that switch off deadline for unregistered simcards will be on May 19th.
“We will facilitate NIRA with a short code with which NIRA will be able to send bulk text messages updating simcard users on their status of registration. The code will be availed to the public by end of today,” Mutabazi said.
The Minister of Security, Lt. Gen Henry Tumukunde who was also part of the Monday news conference said that stakeholders including NIRA, UCC and telecoms will step up public sensitization regarding the processes, locations and requirements for simcard registration. However, the Minister proposed that NIRA fast tracks its process of issuing National Identity cards.
