Telecommunication service providers in Kenya have until the end of this month to pay their contributions to the Universal Service Fund (USF) or have penalties imposed on them and have the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) recover the money by force.
The USF was introduced last year and is designed to grow access to ICTs in rural areas that are deemed uneconomically viable by operators. Mobile network operators and internet service providers are required by law to remit 0.5 per cent of their annual turnover to the USF.
The Standard reports of the over 500 ICT registered companies, only a handful have remitted their dues, with the rest late.
Only Telkom Kenya (Orange) has remitted the money among the mobile operators, with Safaricom, Airtel and yuMobile not having made their contributions by mid-July.
“All the operators have until end of August to make their contributions to the USF after which we will start to impose penalties,” said Fred Matiangi, cabinet secretary at the Ministry of ICT.
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