By XAVIER MANCHISHI –
INFORMATION and communication Technologies (ICTs) are a double-edged sword, so says Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) head of consumer protection Katwamba Mwansa.
That is the painful truth that users of ICTs have to live with, not least parents who need to monitor what their children are doing on their smart phones, laptops and other internet enabled devices. ZICTA has already come up with guidelines to service providers such as the child online protection, cyber crime alertness and consumer rights protection.
ZICTA is a regulatory body responsible for regulating the ICT Sector and derives its mandate from the Postal Services Act No. 22 of 2009, Electronic Communications and Transactions Act No. 21 and the ICT Act No. 15 of 2009 to regulate ICTs, postal and courier services in Zambia.
In this regard, ZICTA has embarked on a consumer awareness programme aimed at sensitising the public on the responsible use of ICTs and effectively regulating service providers in the ICT and postal services.
Last month, the authority embarked on an awareness campaign in Muchinga and Northern provinces which took in Chinsali, Nakonde, Mpika and Isoka as well as Mbala, Mpulungu, Kasama and Luwingu
ZICTA support services director Mofya Chisala issued a rallying call to the media to play its role of sensitising the public on the responsible use of ICTs that rank as the bedrock of development world over.
Mr Chisala told a ZICTA media interaction in Mpika which attracted journalists from ZANIS and from community radio stations that the authority intends to engage the media in the execution of its mandate of regulating the ICT sector. “You people in the media have the power of the pen to let people know that if used responsibly, ICTs are now the backbone of economic development anywhere in the world,” Mr Chisala said.
Through consumer awareness programmes, ZICTA wants society to be well schooled on the pitfalls of abusing ICTs with the authority particularly convinced that parents are the major stakeholders in the child online protection.
This against the backdrop that recently, the Ministry of Education included ICTs on the school curriculum and Mr Chisala is of the view that parents have a duty to ensure their children are using the internet purely for academic benefits.
“For example, Facebook says users have to be 18 years old but we know that even 13-year-olds are on Facebook now. We want parents to start monitoring what their children are doing on the internet,” Mr Chisala said.
The most common forms of cyber crime as hacking, online identity theft, spamming and software piracy although pornography has emerged lately through possession, sharing and keeping of pornographic materials mostly on smart phones.
The Electronics and Communication Transactions (ECT) Act of 2009 number 102 stipulates that any person who produces pornography for the purpose of distribution through a computer system or possession on any data storage medium is liable to imprisonment for a period not exceeding 10 years.
Oblivious to this provision of the law, people have been producing pornographic videos which end up going viral through social media channels such as whatsapp.
“Be sensitive with what you hold on your smart phones and other devices. With the equipment available to us at forensic lab and elsewhere, we are able to find whose device is exchanging pornography with who,” ZICTA cyber security officer Nawa Samatebele said.
Zambia is not in isolation in the cyber world.
Locally, people have fallen victim to international cyber crimes where their emails are hacked into or receive notification of winning a lottery.
Mr Samatebele argues that consumers of ICT services have to be wary of cyber crime that has become sophisticated almost at a similar pace as efforts to fight the crime.
“The best way to understand this is that one cannot score a goal in a match they are not playing in.
So when you receive and email or text that you have won money, why even get excited,” he said.
Mr Samatebele said people have to abide by Zambian laws regardless of whether they use a social media platform that is regulated from abroad.
This means that whether Facebook allows people to upload nude pictures, Zambia laws do not.
During the consumer awareness programme, ZICTA also carpeted the three service providers Airtel, MTN and Zamtel, for selling active Subscriber Identification Module (sim) cards, defective phones, sending unsolicited promotional messages to
subscribers among other consumer breaches.
ZICTA consumer protection officer Edgar Mlauzi warned that selling active simcards was a serious breach that could expose the country to security risks much the same way Al Shabab militants used an unregistered sim card to plan the bombing of a shopping mall in Nairobi.
Mr Mlauzi also warned the public against allowing strangers to use their identity cards to register sim cards which he said puts them at the risk of being accountable for the actions of the person who will be using the same card.
“That becomes a security risk and it also defeats the purpose of registering sim cards. What if you help someone to register a sim card and they turn out to be a criminal?” he asked.
During the Mpulungu and Mbala legs of the consumer awareness campaign, the authority discovered that the agents of mobile service providers were using their own NRCs to register sim cards for new subscribers.
Apart from that, ZICTA officials were inundated with complaints about phones they bought for K25 on a promotion from Zamtel but were taking forever to be activated.
According to the quality of service guidelines, sim cards are supposed to be activated within 48 hours of purchase but Mr Mlauzi wondered why the ones Zamtel rolled out in their promotion had taken over a week to start working.
ZICTA has actually threatened legal action against mobile service providers selling active sim cards with the authority’s type approval engineer Elliot Kabalo saying Statutory Instrument number 65 of 2011 bars mobile service providers from selling active sim cards.
The ZICTA head of consumer protection Mr Mwansa said all these measures were undertaken in the authority’s quest to firmly regulate the ICT sector but that its mandate would be enhanced with an input from consumers.
Mr Mwansa said the authority was actually targeting unserved areas and which was why ZICTA embarked on a programme to erect 205 communication towers in chiefdoms countrywide and was also constructing computer labs at selected schools countrywide to empower students with ICT knowledge.
“We want to bridge the gap so that if there is 3G network in Lusaka, there should be 3G network in Luwingu and other parts of the country,” Mr Mwansa said.
In Luwingu, a senior citizen Edmond Bwalya caused laughter when said he was only able to access mobile service network in his maize field but never in the house.
ZICTA also challenges service providers under its ambit not to exclude persons with disabilities given that Zambia was party to the UN convention on the rights of person with disabilities and the country must be seen to be uphold their rights in all sectors, not least in the ICT sector.
The purpose of the UN Convention is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.