Giyani
17 February 2006
Avuxeni
Ri a vusa
Dumelang!
We are grateful for the warm welcome you have given us here in Giyani. In
true African style, you have been unsparing with your hospitality and ubuntu
since the first day we sent our organising teams here. So, from the onset I
must confess that we are indeed happy to be here today.
1. Our goal: Universal and Convenient Access to Home Affairs Services
The services that we offer to you as Home Affairs are central to peopleâs
lives and can affect all of us individually at a personal level. Enabling
documents such as Identity Documents (IDs) and birth certificates, are key in
unlocking access to the rest of the services of government, such as health,
education, employment and social security.
It is for this reason therefore that is has become important to us that
everybody should be able to access these services without inconvenience and
unnecessary inefficiencies.
We have taken a decision that we have to achieve this universal access so
that nobody will ever have to walk long distances and wait for longer periods
before they can apply for their enabling documents. Particularly for our people
in the rural areas who are forced to spend money they do not have in order to
pay for transportation to these offices.
2. The purpose of the imbizo
This is the reason why we are here. We are here for four reasons: Firstly,
and most importantly to listen to the problems that you have about the services
rendered by our department and government as a whole. Secondly to open this new
office where people in and around Giyani can access services conveniently,
thirdly, to unveil our new better and bigger mobile units and lastly to
publicise our cooperation with the post office to deliver uncollected IDs
straight to your homes.
3 The new Giyani DHA Office
You will remember that in the old days, people used to apply for the
enabling documents at the Magistrate offices. When a decision on competencies
was taken to separate these services from the Magistrate office, we then faced
a dire consequence of shortages for adequate space for Home Affairs.
We have now completed an audit of all our infrastructure and offices needs
and we are going to use the result of this study to roll our office where they
are needed.
As you can attest from the office we are opening today, not only do we just
want to build offices, but we want to ensure that these offices are of quality
and that they will never again be a source of frustration for you, our valued
clients.
We believe that the people we serve deserve properly equipped, clean and
hospitable offices, with officials who serve them politely and caringly.
This office is fully computerised and until we can roll out the rest of the
offices in this region, it will provide a lot of relief for surrounding
villages where service points are not yet computerised.
4. People Centred Service
Last December, as part of our Batho Pele flagship programmes, we launched
our nametag campaign. Since then, all our officials are now expected to wear
name tags, bearing their names and faces when they interact with the public AT
ALL TIMES.
Through this we are going to ensure that if you were to receive bad service
from us, you can be able to identify us by name. As Public Servants, me and all
my colleagues in this department, are all committed to service excellence for
YOU.
Like all our other offices, this office shall also operate extended office
hours, closing only at six everyday and opening until lunchtime on
Saturdays.
5 The Mobile Units
As we launched the first 10 mobile units fully equipped with computers and
satellite connectivity last year, we promised that another 57 will be added and
distributed to the most rural parts of our country. We are happy that the last
batch of these is now ready for distribution by the end of this month. They
include the new bigger and better seven ton trucks with added capacity to serve
more of our clients. Today we unveil these seven ton trucks and hand them over
to serve the communities here in Limpopo and everywhere around the country.
We are aware that our programme of building new offices might not cover
every corner of our country in the short term, and until we achieve that, the
mobile units will help us in ensuring that we reach as many people as we can in
areas where we still do not have offices.
Our assessment of the work done by few mobile units has been that, although
they have had few teething problems in the beginning, they have made a big
difference in taking service to areas where we could not reach before. These
are truly new offices on the move.
Inside these trucks you can receive any service that can be offered in a
fully equipped normal office of Home Affairs.
These fully computerised mobile offices provide services ranging from the
electronic registration of births and deaths as well as the subsequent printing
of certificates, collection of identity document applications, distribution of
identity documents to respective applicants, and so forth.
Between May and December 2005 the mobile units rendered the following
services:
* 52 479 identity document applications were collected
* 11 339 births were registered
* 4 232 Lokisa Ditokomane campaign applications were collected
* 825 temporary identity certificates were issued
* 213 passport applications were collected
* 5 931 certificates (including births, marriages & deaths) were
issued
* 347 marriages were registered, and
* 1 561 identity documents were distributed to the respective applicants
6 The Co-operation with the South African Post Office
One of the biggest problems we have had as a department has been the number
of uncollected IDs that are stocked in our offices all over the country,
because their owners do not come to collect them. We have many people
complaining about not having received their IDs. We have now signed a
cooperation agreement with the South African Post Office in terms of which the
post office will assist us in delivering these IDs door to door under serious
security arrangements. In terms of this agreement every ID shall be considered
duly delivered if it was handed over or collected by the owner and signed
for.
The Department and the Post Office will together assess all the delivery
reports periodically.
I am therefore calling upon all our people to ensure that when applying for
IDs you give us correct addresses. If you are in a village you can provide the
address of the tribal authority, your plot or stand number, or the nearest
serviceable address close to you, but whatever you do, please provide us with a
reliable address. There are many times when we have tried to deliver documents
to addresses that do not exist or where people are not known.
7 Some of the Urgent issues for concern
a. Illegal Immigrants
I am aware that there are many immigrants that live amongst our communities
both from Mocambique and Zimbabwe. Some of these immigrants are illegal and as
long as they remain in our country illegally, we shall have to deal with them
through the law. We cannot tolerate anyone who abuses our hospitality and
undermine our laws and security. The most important thing however is that as
the community, despite these problems, you should not take the law into your
own hands, because in doing so you shall also be breaking the law.
There are also immigrants who have lived amongst our communities for many
years now, and some of them have been regularised as South Africans through the
Southern African Development Community (SADC) exemptions. There are also other
immigrants who have come here legally. Whatever the status of these people, it
will be wrong for us to hate and attack them just because they are from another
country. This is called Xenophobia and it stands against all our moral and
legal obligations as South African citizens. We must have compassion for the
suffering of others.
Citizenship of Children born in South Africa
Many misunderstandings have arisen due to the interpretation of our laws
regarding children born in our country by non-South Africans. I am aware that
there are many women from our neighbouring countries who come into our country
to give birth in our hospitals, sometimes with the mistaken understanding that
their children will receive birth certificates that make them South African
citizens.
Only Children of South Africans can become citizens of South Africa. It is
as simple as that. A South African who gives birth to a child in a foreign
country can register their child anywhere as a South African. This principle
should also apply to any non-South African who gives birth to a child here as a
foreigner, they should register that child as a citizen of their own
country.
* Local elections
As we move towards 1 March, I urge all of you who are registered to vote to
take care of your IDs and those of you who have misplaced them to apply for
Temporary Identity Certificates.
We together fought for the freedom of this country; it will be a sad thing
if we decide not to participate in shaping its future. Before you decide not to
vote, you should remember that Freedom did not come free.
Thank you.
Issued by: Department of Home Affairs
17 February 2006
Source: Department of Home Affairs (http://www.home-affairs.gov.za)
