By Lodu William Odiya
The National Legislative Assembly in an ordinary sitting have yesterday passed the Cybercrime and Computer Misuse Bill 2025 with all its recommendations to the final reading.
Speaking during the session, the speaker of NTLA, Jemma Nunu Kumba congratulated the standing specialized committee for the milestone in reaching the final stage.
She urged the Standing specialized committee to work together and finish the necessary required editing before it is handed over to the president.
“Thank you very much the committee for the work and all of you for your contribution and observation on this. So, still I urge honourable Agau and the ministry to sit down with the committee to clean the document before we submit it to HE the president so that all the important view that we have mentioned during this debate are incorporated in the bill then we finalize it” she explained.
Speaking to the media after the parliamentary session, Oliver Mori Benjamin, Chairperson of Parliamentary Committee for Information, Communication, Technology and postal service and also parliament spokesperson, said that the bill had stayed in the parliament here for almost one year.
He underscored the bill is very important for the gender although always people say the gender is taking the feminine side.
“Somebody may decide wherever he is to speak provocative words, to propagate for misinformation, to mislead the community and the society thinking he is talking on social media, he is free. But as of today, as the parliament is concerned, those people misleading and doing misinformation must know that this bill is now passed” he said.
Mori underscored that the Bill is going to track whoever is spreading misinformation, defaming characters of others.
“Those hacking in the telephones are minor, but there could be some criminals, professional ones, who is staying in Nairobi, in India or even in America, can hack our system of government” he added.
He emphasized that the Bill has been passed to stop some hackers who penetrate into the Ministry of Finance, Foreign Affairs to ascertain sensitive documents of a country’s policy and use it for their own purpose.
He said the government can even enter into agreement or protocols with other countries on how they can jointly trace and track criminals.
“They may commit crime in Uganda and run to South Sudan, but through this system, if our National Communication Authority is tipped officially to identify this person and is identified that that criminal is here, then our government even can get hold of that criminal and hand him back to Uganda or to any other country” Mori stressed.
The Cybercrime and computer Misuse Bill 2025 is a very vital step towards protecting citizens and regulating online activities in South Sudan.
It is to prevent and punish crimes committed using computers, mobile devices, or the internet and to protect businesses and government instructions from online threats such as hacking, fraud and social media abuse.
The Bill provisions empower authorities to strengthens national Cybersecurity and issue directives to critical infrastructure and service providers to ensure their cyber security.