KUALA LUMPUR: Telecommunications companies are to carry out compulsory registration of all their prepaid card users at the end of the year. Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik said the Cabinet decided on the move for security reasons and to stop people from abusing the service. “It is going to be a big exercise. We are not going to send people to jail but they will not get the (prepaid) card if they do not register. “We have told the telcos about the registration. “It will start at the end of the year for the whole country,” he told reporters after chairing the Gerakan central committee meeting.
A pioneer registration exercise for the telcos will start in Malacca and Penang next month. “This is to find out what kind of problems the telcos encounter and we will try to overcome them. The main reason we are doing this is because of security.
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“It is getting very dangerous,” he said.
Since June, new prepaid users have to provide personal identification documents when they purchase the subscriber identification module (SIM) cards.
Dr Lim had suggested in June that users register their SIM packs and personal identification when they top up their credit or airtime.
He said there were 16 million mobile phone users of whom 14 million used the prepaid service.
“A big number of prepaid users are foreign workers. And they do not have fixed addresses,” he added.
Asked about the response from the telcos to the exercise, Dr Lim said:
“They may be afraid of the huge exercise because they do not want to spend the money.
“But it must go on. The decision is final.”
Telcos in Australia are required by the country’s Communications Authority to collect some personal information from prepaid users while Switzerland’s Parliament passed a law in 2003 requiring such users to be registered.
Thailand started registering prepaid card users from May 10 to stop terrorists from using prepaid SIM cards as fuses to detonate bombs. Singapore and India also require similar registration.
In Taiwan, buyers must show two types of identification and operators are penalised if their records are incomplete.
Asked if Gerakan faced problems in people sending threatening SMS messages in the run-up to the party elections, he said there was none.
Dr Lim also said that it would be up to the delegates or newly-elected central committee to decide whether a party adviser should be chosen.
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