Parliament receives petition challenging Safaricom SIM card deactivation and reassignment

Parliament probes Safaricom’s six-month SIM deactivation and number reassignment, amid notice concerns and users’ M-Pesa funds for deceased subscribers.

The petition was filed by Thomson Kerongo and Asiago Stephen, who allege that Safaricom deactivates SIM cards after roughly six months of inactivity before reallocating the associated numbers.

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The petitioners told the Committee that M-Pesa accounts are closely bound to mobile numbers, meaning that when a line is deactivated following the death of its holder, tracing and recovering any remaining balance becomes a prolonged and complicated process.

One petitioner cited a specific case in which a person he knew died while holding funds in a mobile money account, and that efforts to recover the money after the line was deactivated had proved difficult and time-consuming.

Source: Tuko