Back in 2020, the Kenya Information and Communication (Amendment) Bill was introduced to the National Assembly.
According to an edit to the law, telcos were tasked to credit a customer who initiates a call that gets dropped after a connection by KES 10 for each interrupted call within their network for a maximum of three dropped calls per day. The revision also added that despite the said compensation, an operator could not be tasked to compensate a customer where a call drops due to third-party interference on a carrier’s connection lines or an inevitable accident.
This amendment was key because it sought to compel carriers to improve their services and reduce or eliminate call interruption altogether.
However, the bill has since expired because members of parliament failed to pursue it, and it was therefore not reviewed by the National Assembly. Often, a bill expired if it is not discussed for more than one year.
“The following Bills which were published in 2019 and whose second reading had not been concluded by end of the fifth session have now lapsed,” Justin Muturi, the Speaker of the National Assembly in a statement.
So, what does this mean? Well, first, if you have experienced dropped calls, operators, including the likes of Safaricom, Airtel and Telkom Kenya are not going to compensate you because there is no legal framework to compel them to do so.
Remember in the past, carriers had spent millions of shillings reimbursing Kenyans for dropped calls. This happened sporadically about three years ago when many people received hundreds of shillings and perhaps more for network failures. The exercise had been pushed by the CA.
And where does this leave us?
The bill can be introduced to the National Assembly by an MP and should be debated before it is signed into law.
Will this development take place? We will inform you when it does.
