Mobile money services have become a significant source of consumer grievances in Uganda, as revealed by the 1st Annual Consumer Voice Report released by CONSENT Uganda.
This organization published two reports that detail consumer complaints regarding various goods and services in the country, including findings from the Financial Sector Regulatory Framework Review Report, which focuses on digital finance.
These reports shed light on the difficulties consumers encounter in both the digital finance sector and the wider market for goods and services.
The analysis highlighted that mobile money services are the most problematic for users, alongside banks and microfinance institutions.
The report indicates a notable increase in complaints related to mobile money, which is commonly used for transactions, savings, and payments. Consumers reported various issues, such as fraud perpetrated by scammers and delays or failures in transactions due to network outages. During a press briefing, advocate Alexander Ssensikombi emphasized that the predominant complaints identified in the review were linked to mobile money services.
“Mobile money has the largest number of complaints amongst the consumers,” he said.
He stressed that numerous customers have voiced their dissatisfaction with telecom companies’ failure to quickly resolve reported problems.
Henry Kimera, the Team Leader at CONSENT Uganda, pointed out that they started monitoring consumer complaints in October 2023, emphasizing an increasing pattern of challenges faced by users.
“What we are trying to do in this report is to make sure that we bring out the consumer voices, and we get how these issues can be addressed at different levels,” he added.
Kimera pointed out that the report on digital finance emphasizes growing worries among consumers, especially regarding the uptick in fraud and scams.
“The report on digital finance, we were looking at getting consumer voices, what are issues affecting them in digital finance and consumers raised major issues about frauds, scams, network failure and people playing around with their data,” he noted.
“The “Bafere” (fraudsters), the fraud, the scams that are within mobile money, issues like we have sent you money, and I sent it to you wrongly, may you please send it back. Those scams are the major issue. Then the network failures, when they are sending or are receiving money and the network isn’t working. That is a major issue,” Kimera added.
Kimera highlighted the crucial role of collaboration among regulatory bodies to guarantee the successful enforcement of laws, which is essential for enhancing security and upholding standards.
He pointed out that the review uncovered customer protection laws in Uganda that are currently not being applied. He called for the laws to be enforced to rebuild and sustain customer trust.
“When we were doing the desk review, we have got laws as a country, in the bank of Uganda, micro finance, institutions that can protect consumers. Now the issue is we need to see how we get them implemented. There’s great need for coordination of the different regulatory agencies where the laws are they need to be implemented,” he said.
The report underscored the importance of stricter regulations, enhanced customer service, and more robust fraud prevention strategies to rebuild consumer trust.
Additionally, Consent Uganda released a report capturing consumer feedback on general goods and services, which raised alarms about food safety in the country.
One significant concern was the distribution of uncertified products.
Ronnet Ayebare, the Research and Knowledge Management Officer at CONSENT, pointed out that they gathered 11,154 complaints from October of last year to the present.
The data revealed that transport-related issues dominated the services sector, accounting for 31% of complaints, while substandard products topped the goods category at 57%.
