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The three mobile phone operators in Mozambique, M-Cel, Vodacom and Movitel, have blocked 5.7 million unregistered SIM cards, whose owners missed the 1 December deadline for registration.
The deadline was set by the regulatory body, the Mozambique National Communications Institute (INCM), which warned of heavy fines for companies that failed to block unregistered SIM cards.
At a Maputo press conference on Wednesday, the director of postal and telecommunications services in the INCM, Massingue Apala, said that in the weeks preceding the deadline about two million SIM cards were registered out of more than seven million that were in an “irregular situation”.
The clients whose cards have been blocked will only be able to use them again, once they have registered them with the operators, said Apala.
The number of registered SIM cards is 12,439,070, he announced, and the total number yet to be registered is 5,727,292.
Since the total Mozambican population is around 26 million, half of whom are under the age of 15, these numbers seem high. But registration began in 2010, and some of the cards, both registered and unregistered, certainly belong to people who have died, or whose cards have been lost or stolen, or who have switched phone operator. Furthermore, some clients own cards from more than one operator.
“The objective of blocking SIM cards is to promote the responsible use of telephones and guarantee the protection of citizens”, said Apala. The process was “irreversible”, he added, and since it began more than six years ago, users have had more than enough time to register their cards.
To register, he said, a client needs to present a recognised form of identity document. But in the absence of any document, the client can instead present two witnesses who will testify to his or her identity.
Registration is free of charge, and Apala urged anyone who has been illicitly charged to report the matter to the authorities.
The government first demanded SIM card registration in the wake of the Maputo riots against price increases of 1-2 September 2010. It was argued that the rioters had been mobilized through mobile phone text messages, and so, to avoid the abuse of mobile phones for criminal purposes, all SIM cards should be registered.
The phone companies pointed out that registering all the cards was an enormous task and successfully lobbied the government to extend the deadline. Then, as the riots faded from memory, registration seemed less urgent and dropped off the agenda.
But when Carlos Mesquita became Minister of Transport and Communications in January 2015, he revised the demand for registration. In February 2015, he gave the three companies a month to complete the registration.
Once again, government deadlines proved unrealistic. But in August 2015 the government issued a decree, and threatened companies which failed to register their clients with fines of up to six million meticais (about 126,000 US dollars, at the exchange rate of the time). For a further year, the INCM kept issuing new deadlines for SIM card registration, but the final deadline, 1 December, proved real.
The abuse of mobile phones is not restricted to organizing riots. The criminal gangs involved in the wave of kidnappings that have rocked Mozambican cities since late 2011 use mobile phones to contact their victims’ relatives and demand ransoms. The authorities believe that obligatory SIM card registration will make it easier to track the owners of phones used to commit crimes.
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