By GIDEON NYENDWA
ABOUT 2.1 million non-compliant sim cards have been deactivated by Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) as of March 7, 2022, ZICTA Consumer Protection and Compliance Manager, Edgar Mlauzi, has said.
Mr Mlauzi said the deregistered sim cards were those for subscribers who had more than 10 sim cards registered under one name.
He said that ZICTA had given a directive to mobile service providers that each subscriber should not have more than 10 sim cards registered under their name and the information was communicated to their customers on time.
Mr Mlauzi said that from the time the 2.1 million sim cards were deactivated the number of unsolicited messages that were coming from scammers requesting for money had also reduced.
He also said that the rise in the number of non-complaint sim cards was a result of the agents from the mobile service providers used to sell pre-registered sim cards to the members of the public which also led to the rise of the number of people getting scammed by unknown people.
“Pre-registered sim cards are being used as a conduit in all these scams,” he said
Mr Mlauzi said this during the sensitization exercise against buying pre registered sim cards, that ZICTA had with members of the public at City market in Lusaka.
He said that those people who had bought pre-registered sim cards and have been using them for a long time were supposed to go to the service provider to have the registration of the cards changed but that should be done after presenting proof that they had been using the particular sim card for a long time by a way of producing an affidavit from relevant authorities.
Mr Mlauzi said the launch of the sensitisation was aimed at making members of the public to be part of the solution by saying `no’ to buying pre-registered sim cards by reporting to relevant authorities if they came across any agent that sells pre-registered sim cards. He said that if anyone wanted to have more than 10 sim cards they must first get authority from the mobile service provider, without that, they risk their card getting deregistered.
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