After one and a half months of ranting between Ugandan Citizens and UCC,the D-day 19th may rendered most students’ SIM cards useless. The government had instructed all simcard owners to register using their National Identification Numbers.
The government didn’t consider students especially 1st years who at the time of National ID registration(2014) were below the required 17yrs of age. Neither did it consider the international students who own sim cards but have no national IDs. UCC didn’t open up the registration horizons to allow foreign students use their passports, University IDs or National IDs for their respective countries.
Inconsiderately, the Ugandan students who had no NINs were probably busy doing exams for example at Kyambogo and MUBS thus had no ample time to take up the long Cues at NIRA.
Most University IDs are linked to a data base that includes all data that UCC deems helpful security wise. Instead of requesting for NINs, sim card service providers and UCC should have linked with these databases to fish information by allowing students to register with their IDs. This would in turn save them the 50,000/- requirement and time to acquire national IDs. Most students use mobile money services as a mode of money transaction between their financiers (parents & guardians) and before using this service, it’s a pre-requisite to register the sim card. The re-registration process would have thus been made easier for students using such data.
Having extended the registration till 30th August 2017, let’s all take on the initiative to acquire national IDs for Ugandan students as we await the registration procedure for international students.
“FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY”
