UW News Brief:

Kampala, 13th/ March/ 2015; The Unwanted Witness Uganda has learnt that government has no funds to facilitate the process of enacting the Data Protection and Privacy draft bill into law.

The ministry of information communication and technology at the start of this financial year embarked on the drafting process including inviting members of the public to give their comments whose deadline expired on 12 December 2014. But the process has since stalled with government giving an excuse of funds despite budgetary allocation for the activity.

Under the current Financial Year (FY) 2014/15, over four hundred thirty six million shillings (436,000,000/=) equivalent to US$ 145,334 was budgeted to facilitate the enactment of the Privacy and Data Protection law.

Although article 27 (2) of the 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Uganda states that “No person shall be subjected to unlawful interference of the privacy of that person’s home, correspondences, communication or other property”, there’s no law to enforce that article and protect citizens’ data collected under mandatory SIM Card registration and National Identity (ID) that have fallen prey to politicians and business people/companies with hidden agendas.

The Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of ICT, Doctor Jimmy Pat Samanya, confirmed the lack of funds and added that the government has key priorities like roads and hospitals which it would like to spend the available funds first, because the draft bill does not fall under such category.

THE UNWANTED WITNESS – Uganda

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