The state minister for Planning, David Bahati, has said government is in the final stages of blocking virtual private networks (VPN) that people use to access social media without paying tax.

Effective July 1, 2018, government introduced the over the top (OTT), a 200-shilings-day tax levied on those use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp among others. The now controversial levy attracted opposition and protests from the population, civil society and political actors including some Members of Parliament. Some of them went to court the challenge the tax.

After its passing, man that Ugandans have resorted VPN to evade the tax. At a press conference this week, Minister Bahati said that this was making government get less revenue than they had originally projected. Much as telecommunication companies have come out to say that it is hard to block VPN the government has said it would look for other ways of doing so. 

Celia Tashobya, a student of Makerere University who uses VPN said, "We know the government is just trying to scare us but we won't be shaken."

Okanya Isaac, a student of Kyambogo University who uses Phisphon pro, a different  kind of VPN, taunted the government saying: “Even the Chinese government can fail to block VPN what about our small country? We shall wait and see".

OTT, commonly known as social media tax was first proposed by President Yoweri Museveni last year saying it would check “rumour-mongering”.

Figures from the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) indicate that the tax body fell short of its projections from social media tax in the first quarter of 2018/2019. URA collected 20.5 billion shillings of the expected 24.9 billion shillings between July 1 and end of September 2018.