Uganda leader says social media used for 'lying', defends tax for access | world

KAMPALA (Reuters) – Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has defended the country's new social media tax, saying Ugandans were using such platforms for "lying", and squandering the nation's hard currency on foreign-owned telecom firms.

In May Uganda's parliament pbaded a new tax rate of 200 shillings ($ 0.05) per day for access to online services.

The platforms that have been identified by the country's revenue service include Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, YouTube, Skype, Yahoo Messenger and many others.

The tax, collected by mobile phone internet service providers since July 1, is equivalent to about 20 percent of what typical Ugandan users pay for their mobile phone data plans.

In a statement on Twitter, Museveni describes social media as a "luxury by those who are enjoying themselves or those who are malicious …"

Ugandan social media users , he said, were "endlessly donating money to foreign telephone companies through chatting or even lying."

Uganda's two biggest telecom firms are owned by South Africa's MTN Group and India's Bharti Airtel, while other small players are also mostly foreign-owned .

The tax has gotten extremely unpopular with Ugandan mobile phone users, who say it is unfair and stifles free speech.

"The tax is an absolute insult to Ugandans … we already buy data which the government taxes," said Dickens Kamugisha, a Kampala-based charity worker.

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" And in any case these are now essential communications that people use to reach loved ones, communicate with friends, socialize and mobilize civic … called the government to scrap the tax, which it called an attempt to smother disguised as a measure to raise revenue.

In power since 1986, Museveni, 73, who criticizes him from the world of security.

Last year parliament, controlled by the ruling party, amended the country's constitution and removed a 75-year age cap for presidential candidates. The opposition says the move effectively for the president.

In the past, they have expressed an interest in the use of social media to post critical of the government and some social media users have faced criminal charges over such posts.

There has been a number of transactions on the subject of mobile money, a popular platform used widely in Uganda and across East Africa to transmit cash between individuals and for goods and services.

In the statement Museveni said there had been a "miscommunication" and that the levy would be 0.5 percent of the value of transactions, not 1 percent pbaded by parliament.