Government has extended the validation of sim-cards by one month to 19th May 2017.

Prime Minister Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda has announced the extension in a letter to Uganda Communications Commission-UCC this afternoon. Initially, UCC Executive Director Godfrey Mutabazi said that all sim-cards that are not validated by tomorrow -20^th April – would be deactivated.

Rugunda’s directive came as long queues formed at division and district headquarters across the country with hundreds of nationals pursuing their National Identity cards, the sole prerequisite for the validation exercise.

Uganda has more than 22 million mobile telephone subscribers, according to a recent study by Uganda Communications Commission. Majority of them are split between MTN and Airtel Uganda.

However, only 11 million of these had successfully validated their sim-cards according to Fred Otunnu, UCC’s Corporate Affairs Director. This represents 50 percent of the total subscription in the country.

Otunu had earlier today appeared before the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights where he told members that UCC would tomorrow issue an official announcement on the deadline.