Communication Commision of Kenya's directive is a welcome move

The rate at which conning through the use of mobile phones is taking root in Kenya is alarming.

Mobile phone conmen use different strategies to go about their criminal acts. Some of them hoodwink their victims into making down payments by falsely assuring the unsuspecting victims of huge financial gains. Others use threats, as dire as death, to milk money out of their unsuspecting victims. Sad enough, innocent lives have been lost in the recent past as a result of this conning fiasco.

Against the foregoing backdrop, Communication Commission of Kenya’s (CCK) directive that all mobile phone subscribers formally register their SIM-cards/lines is such a welcome move. Whereas the process may be slightly cumbersome considering one has to stand in sometimes very long queues to get their lines registered, all peace loving Kenyans will agree with me that it is worth the trouble.

Registration of lines will see one surrendering such information as national identification number, address (both postal and physical) and biographical information; mainly their full names and date of birth. This will make it very easy to identify subscribers and most importantly enable police to track down criminals and/or stalkers.

Sure thing, this strategy will work miracles. But I have got one concern that I feel should be addressed to enhance the efficacy of the strategy with specific regards to the mobile phone associated crimes in this country.

My concern is to do with phone theft and its implications. Just like in a case where criminals hijack a car and use it in robbery then abandon it, phone thieves are likely to get into the business of stealing phones then using them to terrorize unsuspecting victims. But unlike the hijacked car which may be recovered without implicating the owner, the phone thieves will most definitely throw the SIM-card away after committing a crime with it making it very difficult to trace them thereby putting the real owner (who is not a criminal) of the SIM-card at risk of being arrested for a crime they didn’t commit.

However, in my opinion this can be effectively addressed by passing a special mobile phone subscriber protection law(s) that allow mobile phone subscribers to report cases of lost SIM-cards to the police immediately they occur. This will ensure the genuine owner of the lost SIM-card is exonerated from any charges should their SIM-cards be used in criminal transactions.

Community policing program will come in handy here. And the program’s capacity will need to be enhanced to incorporate updated ways of combating this emerging form of crime so that its members can be better placed to combat such cases, which - unfortunately - are likely to be rampant once the CCK directive takes full effect.