UCC ban on sale of SIM cards violates freedom of expression

One of the major limitations of government agencies is the penchant to make knee-jerk reactions, often not well-thought out. These reactions ultimately violate fundamental human rights as enshrined in the Constitution.
The latest such spontaneous actions are the recent directives by the telecoms regulator, the Uganda Communications Commission’s (UCC) ban on the sale of SIM cards until service providers have installed National Identity Card readers as well as halting the sale of airtime scratch cards in non-gazetted places on grounds that such brisk business was being abused by criminals to facilitate crime.
But the directives are in total contravention of Articles 27 and 29 of the Constitution, which guarantee citizens’ right to privacy and freedom of expression respectively. UCC, jolted into action following the kidnap and killing of Susan Magara, whose death saw President Museveni criticise last year’s process of verifying and validating SIM cards against the National Identification and Registration Authority database, as directed by UCC.
However, UCC’s response to the presidential criticism denies innocent citizens their right to access information, privacy, anonymity, freedom of expression and further exposes personal data to criminals.
Combining databases or data mining (SIM card and ID) has grave privacy implications. Merged data, which is accessible by many people without a data protection law, may result into using person information or linking individuals without their consent and knowledge.
By June, airtime will only be procured electronically. Granted. There are some criminal activities facilitated using easy-to-get SIM cards, mobile phones and scratch cards, but the solution to this cannot be a ban on the sale or curtailing freedoms. The UCC Act provides for the establishment of the Uganda Communications Centralised Identity Equipment Regulation that is supposed to be effected by approval of Parliament. But UCC had elected to be silent on such a crucial law and has now been jolted into acting in a haphazard and disjointed manner.
UCC has since not tabled before Parliament for approval the Uganda Communications Centralised Identity Equipment Regulations, 2015 to regulate phone monitoring. A promise made by the agency in January to table the regulations in Parliament for approval has not been followed through.
But surprisingly, UCC has already put in place a Centralised Equipment Identity Register system to monitor mobile phones even when regulations to manage the system have not been approved by Parliament. This is typical putting of the cart before the horse, and will not stand the slightest of legal tests. UCC cannot afford to sacrifice the law under the disingenuous guise of haste. The law has to be followed both in letter and spirit. Therefore, the law is the first hurdle that UCC has to cross before any other undertaking.
The jumbled move by UCC does not only infringe on the laws regarding abuse of data, but it also in essence, derails the rights of Ugandans to seamlessly access and transmit information. Mobile phones are some of the main sources of access and transmission of information, but the ban on the sale of SIM cards and airtime scratch cards means many Ugandans will be effectively cut off from the rest of the world. A 2015 UCC report put the number of mobile phone owners in Uganda at 19.5 million.
Though there is no authentic data on the accessibility of electronic Points of Sale (PoS), it is apparent that they are not many electronic airtime retailers. Mobile phone owners in rural and hard-to-reach areas will find it even harder to procure electronic airtime. And as was with the case with the messed up SIM cards registration programme, for the ban of sale of scratch cards, UCC is acting like a lone-wolf with critical stakeholders such as Parliament, police and telecom companies left in the cold.
The absence of an efficient coordination between key stakeholders such as telecom companies, Parliament, citizens and UCC is largely to blame for the mess that marred the SIM cards registration process. But UCC seems not have learnt any lessons.
How can the Minister of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), who supervises UCC, not to have briefed Parliament about an undertaking that will affect the day-to-day lives of more than 20 million Ugandans?
At some point, UCC should not be surprised when MPs, confronted by angry constituents facing difficulty in replacing/buying new SIM cards, table a motion in Parliament demanding that the ban on sale of SIM cards and scratch cards be halted until government puts its house in order.
True, the streamlining of the sale of mobile phones, SIM cards and airtime scratch cards is long overdue, but the government must do it in a legal, pragmatic and rational manner.

Ms Mukasa is the acting chief executive officer, Unwanted Witness-Uganda. [email protected]