The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has said it is in the advanced stages of compiling and tallying data in the ongoing SIM card registration.

Godfrey Mutabazi, the UCC executive director, said the process will be concluded at the end of this month.

“We dispatched teams to various parts of the country to collect data on the exercise, which we shall add up this week to get the real picture,” said Mr Mutabazi. “I cannot tell the exact figures of how many have been registered but I know it’s above the 80 per cent mark.”

Against pressure from parliament, UCC granted a 180-day extension to service providers; 90 days for registration and another 90 days for verification of the captured data.

This, Mr Mutabazi said, was enough time for telecom companies and would give time for UCC to complete other procedures, before they embark on switching off all the unregistered SIM card users.

“We may not grant extensions for the exercise this time,” he warned. Registration of SIM cards started in March 2012 and was supposed to end on February, 28. However, the exercise was marred by technical glitches on the side of the telcoms, until an extension was granted.

Failure to allow an extension would have meant that at least 9.6 million mobile phone users would have been switched off. Uganda currently has 16 million phone users and according to UCC only 70 per cent have registered their SIM cards.

UCC spokesperson, Fred Otunnu maintained that they were waiting for the team dispatched to compile the data across the country.

The exercise was initiated by the Ministry of Security, which designated UCC to oversee the implementation. Among its objectives is to help law enforcement agencies identify mobile phone owners and track criminals who use phones for illegal activities.

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Attempts to get a comment from the respective telcom companies on the progress of the exercise were futile by press time. Since the exercise was launched on March 1, 2012, telecoms have highlighted the absence of national IDs as the biggest challenge to registering their subscribers, especially in rural areas.