Mutula Kilonzo Jnr among Kenyans who did not register their lines

Makueni governor Mutula Kilonzo Junior is among the millions of Kenyans who had their lines disconnected over failure to register them.

The Makueni county chief was responding to a tweet by flamboyant Nairobi lawyer Ahmednassir Abdullahi who vowed to ditch Safaricom after two decades of service.

“After two and half decades of being a loyal customer of Safaricom, they unceremoniously switched off my line this Sunday…

Tomorrow I will move to one of the competitors and will NEVER use their service again”

An hour later, Mutula responded “I suffered the same fate. It took a while to figure out that my line had been barred”.

Other top names whose lines were deactivated were Nandi senator Samson Cherargei, former Wajir Woman Representative Fatuma Gedi, lawyer Charles Kanjama.

Mwala MP Vincent Musyoka Musau alias Kawaya is another victim of SIM card switch off.  He took to his Facebook account to lament that Safaricom were not being fair to him since CA had his registration details.

He went on to reveal that when he tried to self-register, his phone number and national ID details did not match.

However, he was able to make and receive calls.

“Two hours later I forgot my line was deactivated, picked the phone and made a call and the calls went through without any problems at all”, said the youthful legislator.

Industry regulator Communications Authority of Kenya had set October 15 as the deadline for SIM card registration across the country.

This was the second deadline this year. The first was on April 15. It elapsed and CA granted Kenyans six more months to register their lines.

CA had set the deadline to weed out fraudsters and criminals who use unregistered mobile phone lines to do illegal tasks.

Users can reactivate their lines by visiting telecommunications offices as mobile phone line registration is a continuous exercise.

STORY By MWINGI TIMES CORRESPONDENT