High court in Kampala has Thursday thrown out an application seeking an injunction to delay the disconnection of unverified sim cards beyond the set deadline (Friday May 19th)
The case was filed on April 18th by a group of activists under their umbrella organisation Rights Trumpet and led by a one Norman Tumuhimbise, the Jobless brotherhood boss.
In the preliminary stage of the case, the activists challenged the former 7-day ultimatum which was later extended by Prime Minister Rugunda to a period of one month, ending Friday May 19th.
Court would later rule that the application was rendered invalid since the deadline was extended before disposal of the case.
The group however, went ahead to challenge the extended deadline, demanding that the cutoff of unregistered sim cards be stayed until determination of the main case that challenges the move.[related-posts]
In his ruling on Thursday morning, High Court Justice Steven Musota said he couldn’t entertain an application that was over taken by events, considering that government gave citizens 30 more days to complete the registration which the applicants wanted.
He further held that the government had given Ugandans two years to register their sim cards and that they can’t run to court as an excuse.
Justice Musota’s ruling means all telecommunications service providers will deactivate the unverified SIM cards come mid night tonight.
According to telecommunications regulator, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), over 1 million simcards that submitted their details for verification were not found in the National Identity card database.
