THE biometrically-unregistered SIM cards are now being switched off in phases, the communication regulator has revealed, hinting that more than 900,000 cards were deactivated on Monday night. Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority (TCRA) Director-General James Kilaba said in Dar es Salaam that they wouldn’t switch off all unregistered cards at once, to avoid overwhelming the systems.

The deadline for biometric SIM card registration expired on 20 January with thousands of mobile phone users failing to register their SIM cards due to various reasons, including lack of national identification numbers and systems gridlocks. Mr. Kilaba stressed that the shutdown exercise for those who failed to register their SIM cards biometrically would be done in phases and no unrecognized card would be left active.

He confirmed that the communication watchdog started switching off the SIM cards at around 10 pm to 656,091 mobile phone subscribers who acquired national identification numbers but had not registered their lines. The DG added that the second group involved 318,950 phone users who registered their lines by using national IDs before the biometric registration was rolled out.

“These people have been reminded several times to update their information but failed to do so …there is no excuse for not switching off their SIM cards,” Mr. Kilaba pointed out.

“We cannot just switch off five or ten million subscribers at once … after shutting down the services, we expect these people to go and retrieve their lines; therefore if you block the services to all of them they will fail to access registration services on time and we will be overwhelming the systems,” he said.

He explained that biometric SIM card registration was crucial for the country’s safety and will help in the fight against criminal acts such as fraud and theft.

“People have been committing such criminal acts believing that they cannot be easily identified,” the DG noted.

Mr. Kilaba further clarified that after the SIM cards were switched off, phone users will only receive SMS on the progress of their registration and not otherwise. The TCRA boss, however, noted that victims of the imminent mass switch-off of SIM cards will have an opportunity to retrieve their numbers after either getting a national identity card or just ID number from the National Identification Authority (NIDA).
He added that the exercise is continuous to all current SIM card owners who have not registered their chips biometrically and those who want to obtain new phone numbers.

The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) figures by January 15 show that over 27.2 million SIM cards, the equivalent of 56 percent, have been registered biometrically. The number of all SIM cards which have been registered in the country accounts for over 48.7 million, thus figures for non-biometric registered covers 21.4 million SIM cards, equivalent to 44 percent.

Meanwhile, NIDA said that it will continue to attend the public in need of national identities. NIDA spokesperson Mr. Thomas William said that over the past two days, Tanzanians in large numbers have been flocking NIDA offices and other official open spaces in search of their ID numbers which would spare them of being shut out of the communication system.

“We are attending national ID seekers up to late hours. But for today (yesterday) the number has gone down unlike in the previous days,” Mr. William told this reporter at Mnazi Mmoja grounds in Dar es Salaam where his office has camped. He said that NIDA has added staff and opted to offer services in open spaces as a way of attending a bigger number of people.

 

SOURCE: Daily News