Chiloba States Penalty for Failure to Register sim cards

The Communications Authority (CA) has set a cash penalty for Kenyans who will not register their SIM cards with their respective telecommunication service providers by April 15.

Defending the move to impose a fine on subscribers who fail to register their SIM cards, CA Director General of Ezra Chiloba argued that registration is aimed at combating cybercrime and fraud in the digital space.

In the latest move, the authority maintains that the regulations will be implemented and those in possession of unregistered SIM cards would face fines of up to Ksh300,000 or serve a jail term of six months or both.

The former Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chief Executive Officer further instructed network operators to speed up the the data clean up exercise and unregistered lines sweep up.

Chiloba added that, “we want before the end of April all the networks to be cleaned up by deactivating all unregistered and improperly registered SIM cards from the networks.”

in the registration exercise, mobile subscribers are expected to present their National Identification details and a photo, which is taken during the exercise that takes less than five minutes.

The directive will also affect users with multiple SIM cards with no proper registration. This is in line with the latest push to enforce vigorous regulations by capturing biometric data of millions of subscribers.