Ugandan Network Assists in Forming ICT Consumer Protection Association

One of the founders of the association is telecoms and ICT lawyer Paul Asiimwe. In an interview in the Newsletter of I-Network Asiimwe says the association started because he and many people around him complained about receiving commercial text messages. If you then unsubscribed to the messages, you were charged for it.

Asiimwe teamed up with a friend and tried to solve the problem by calling the telecom company. When they were treated badly and there was no action from the regulator they decided to take the next step and make a bigger issue out of this. They teamed up with members of the National ICT for Development network I-Network who were also discussing the problem and formed the Uganda ICT Consumer Protection Association (UICPA).

In the interview in the newsletter Paul Asiimwe says that “The UICPA is seeking to be an intermediary between consumers and providers of ICT products and services. We hope to bridge the information gap between consumers of these products and their providers.”
The association is consumer driven and will send consumer complaints to the Uganda Communications Commission, the regulator of the communications industry in Uganda. It will also send complaints to the service providers and helps consumers how to formulate their complaints. If then no action is taken, the association will follow up.

The protection association is temporarily  housed at I-Network’s office in Kamwokya. Here meetings of the interim committee (selected during the launch) are held. Three members of the management team of I-Network are on the interim committee of UICPA. I-Network has been actively involved since the start of the association. It provided a platform through a discussion group and seminars to nurture the idea of a platform. I-Network also provided a website and a newsletter  to share information about the platform and will continue to do so.

More information can be found on UICPA’s website and on I-Networks website.