Minister of Information Communication Technologies (ICT), Postal and Courier, Services, Kazembe Kazembe has commented on the implementation of bills into law against the speed at which the technology is moving and said that the government cannot bypass certain legal procedures, during a press conference in Harare today.
Stakeholders in the ICT sectors have in the past raised concern that the government is taking too long to implement policies resulting in the creation of policies which will not be up to date with the technological changes that would have taken place by the time a bill is passed into law.
“Unfortunately we cannot bypass any of those steps (legal procedures) but what we are trying to do is try by all means to speed up the process,” Kazembe said. “and we have given ourselves targets, we have set ourselves targets, to say within the next one month or so the bill must be in the parliament.
“We can only speed that but we are not going to allow shortcuts.”
Concern on the slow process in enacting policies into law appears as the Cybercrime and Cyber Security Bill is yet to be implemented into law despite the rate at which technology is changing raising fears that the bill may become an outdated law.
The ICT Minister insisted that the Bill has to go through the legal processes.
“its (the bill) with the Attorney General, that the procedure, from there it goes to the committee, or legislation and from there it goes to the cabinet then it goes to implement,” Kazembe said
The Cyber Crime Bill was first drafted in 2016 with the general public fearing that the government could use the policy to invade privacy online.
Zimbabwe currently is in short of laws dealing with crimes related to the ever-changing technologies.
The Cyber Bill will deal with crimes related to using of computers if implemented into law.
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