For some 30 African countries - including the technologically-advanced North African giants in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Egypt - the deadline for digital migration is 2020. But Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) insists on completing the digital transition by June 17, 2015.
According to UCC, this deadline is justifiable because Uganda is one of many African countries which committed to digital migration by June 2015 in the Geneva 2006 agreement of the International Telecommunication Union's regional telecommunication conference.
Furthermore, UCC is mandated by Section 5(1)(i) of the Uganda Communications Act, 2013, to set national standards and ensure compliance with national and international standards and obligations laid down by international communication agreements and treaties to which Uganda is a party.
However, this deadline is not only unlawful but also arbitrary and unjustifiable, and thus null and void.Uganda is a dualist country - its domestic law does not automatically incorporate public international law.
Accordingly, the Geneva 2006 agreement - which UCC purports to be implementing ñ does not have legislative effect in the local context. This is because specific legislation has never been passed to transform the norms and standards laid down by that treaty into rules and regulations with legal force in Uganda.
This could easily have been achieved by invoking Section 93 of the UCC Act which empowers the ICT minister, after consultation with UCC and with approval of parliament, to, by statutory instrument, make regulations for better, carrying into effect the provisions of the act, including Section 5(1)(i) mentioned above.
Section 16 of the interpretation law requires every statutory instrument to be published in the Uganda gazette before it can be enforced. Unfortunately, this was not done for the digital migration deadline sought to be enforced by UCC. Therefore, it cannot be the basis for interfering with people's freedom of information in this country.Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment