Information Minister Patricia Kaliati has declared ‘honeymoon over’ for pseudo names, popularly known as ‘zigoba’ in Malawi, owing to the passing of Electronic Transaction Bill by Parliament.
The Bill, which was passed on Tuesday, among others seek to be regulating mobile money transactions such as TNM’s Mpamba and Airtel’s Airtel Money.
The law will also make it mandatory for online media house owners and editors to register.
And according to Kaliati, the Bill is also empowering mobile telecommunication service providers to disclose faces behind pseudo names, that she said have been taking advantage of the absence of the law to defame others.
“No more hiding. Honeymoon is over for all abusers of the internet. The law is empowering service providers to disclose them,” said Kaliati.
Commenting on the same, Media Committee of Parliament chairperson Samuel Kawale, said the biggest target in introducing the law was to protect the consumers of internet products in the country.
“Consumers have always been on the losing side. And with this law in place, cyber related crimes will be punishable by both local and international laws,” said Kawale.
In November 2015, Parliament referred the bill to the media committee, to rectify some of the anomalies noted soon after its presentation.
Mchinji North East MP Alex Chitete, once described the new law as ‘draconian’ saying its initial intention was to muzzle freedom of the press, more especially the online media houses.
Among other cyber-crime-related penalties in the bill is the imposing of Mk10million fine for those found guilty of hacking, cracking and introduction of viruses into the local cyber space.
However, it is yet to be seen whether Malawi Government has technical capacity to enforce the new law in a country where there is to regulation in the selling, purchasing and usage of Sim Cards as is the case in other SADC region countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Recently, the government of Uganda was able to shut down access to some social media facilities such as face book, WhatsApp and twitter to thwart national examination cheating. Last week, Zimbabwe also did the same to tame escalating countrywide protests.