The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga has blamed the Executive arm of government for the confusion and revenue lost resulting from the switching off of millions of mobile phone subscribers.
Kadaga said during the house sitting on Tuesday that the Legislature that is in touch with the reality in the population warned against the rushing to disable the unregistered mobile phone users when millions had not yet fulfilled the requirements but the Executive didn’t listen.
“The country has lost in revenue collections because of the rigidity of the Executive. If the Executive had listened to us (Parliament) we would not be experiencing this confusion and the rest,” Kadaga said.
Parliament on Thursday last week passed a resolution extending the SIM card registration using the unique National Identification Numbers which is demanded by the National Identification Registration Authority and the Uganda Communication Commission, for one year.
It is now understood that 3 days before the Parliament’s resolution, Cabinet had on Friday May 12th maintained that the unregistered subscribers should be switched off.
According to Kadaga, the inflexibility of the Executive against the concerns of the millions of Ugandans caused unnecessary tension.
Immediately after government announcing its insistence that unregistered subscribers are going to be disconnected even after Parliament’s resolution, Kadaga declared that the house committee on Rules, Discipline and Privileges should investigate the line minister of ICT and National Guidance, Frank Tumwebaze for contempt of Parliament.
On Monday the NRM Caucus chaired by President Yoweri Museveni, preempted Parliament’s move and extended the SIM card registration to August 30th 2017.