Kenya is a wonderful country but at the same time, a very odd nation to be a part of as Sunny Bindra portrays in his book that is aptly titled, The Peculiar Kenyan. One of our many national eccentricities is a lack of foresight and planning. As a country, we are constantly operating in crisis or emergency mode. Tell me why annual drought and floods always surprise us year in year out? It is annual, which means expected every year, common! Sigh!
In other matters of national emergency, I have just found out that the Communications Authority of Kenya, CAK has today released a statement requiring all Kenyans who own sim cards to have registered their lines before the end of April 2022 or risk paying a fine of Kshs. 300,000 or serve a jail term of six months or both. All unregistered or improperly registered lines are also going to be switched off by the end of April by the mobile network operators. The horror!
Ok, I just checked, woi ! Safaricom had indeed sent me four prompts, two in November 2021 and two in February 2022. Nothing from Airtel.
While the enforcement of the regulation is good and will help in curbing fraud, catching criminals and terrorists, where and when did CAK make this information publicly available to all Kenyans if indeed compliance with this regulation has been a requirement since 2017? The glaring lack of proper public awareness before enforcement of government directives and poor dissemination of information is a perennial problem. Resorting to threats and fines to cajole Kenyans into registering their lines is ridiculous to say the least. If I, who resides in the capital city with plenty of access to information are only finding out about the registration this week because there has been incessant chatter about it on Twitter, I highly doubt that my relatives in the village are aware that their sim cards are going to be switched off at the end of April leave alone the bizarre fine. Ignorance is no defense though.
Why haven’t the mobile operators sent everyone a prompt to register all this time when they have time to send plenty of promotional messages that no one asked for all day every day? Ok, I just checked, woi ! Safaricom had indeed sent me four prompts, two in November 2021 and two in February 2022. Nothing from Airtel.
Well, if you are like me and don’t take Safaricom messages seriously and somehow missed it, go register your sim cards before the end of April if you can. Remember to clean up well for the photos, you never know when and where they will surface seeing as data protection is still a joke in this country.
Mimi wako kwa hali na mali @SquareOblangata
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