Tanzania: Busy Week for Arusha Residents to Meet Jan 20 Deadline

By Daily News Reporter in Arusha

IT will be a busy week for Arusha residents to meet the January 20 deadline of biometric SIM card registration.

The regional commissioner's office yesterday urged the residents of the seven districts to turn up in

big numbers to utilise the extension of the Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA) and National Identification Authority (NIDA) coordinated exercise.

The registration extension seeks to cover all Tanzanians by January 20. Having a national identification card is a requirement for SIM card registration. However, as it stands, only 14 million Tanzanians out of the 55 million possess national IDs.

The Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority (TCRA) recently announced that over 31 million mobile phone users who were not yet registered biometrically could be blocked on December 31.

The authority held that only 12 million out of 43.75 million mobile phone subscribers had biometrically registered their SIM cards.

Launched in May last year, the process seeks to improve security in the country and curb mobile phone fraudsters.

It follows a pilot project in seven regions - Dodoma, Dar es Salaam, Coast, Singida, Tanga, Iringa and Zanzibar launched by TCRA.

The new system requires customers to register using their fingerprints, as well as possessing the national ID to register their SIM cards.

The registration of SIM cards is mandatory under the Electronics and Postal Communications Act, 2010 which provides that it is an offence to sell or distribute an unregistered SIM card, to use an unregistered SIM card, to fail to record the sale of a SIM card and to provide false information or statement during registration.