Malusi Gigaba, MP, at the National Assembly
7 June 2007
We have emerged from the tumultuous events of 2006 stronger, clearer about
what we need to do better to re-organise ourselves.
We are here today to table before you our vision for a future and better
Department of Home Affairs, confident that what we shall place before you is a
working plan.
Following the report of the intervention task team, furious work is taking
place within the Department to put up the new structures and systems that will
achieve the objective finally to put the Department right.
During the past financial year, accompanied by the members of the top and
senior management, we visited all the provinces to brief them about the support
intervention team and to mobilise them to support this initiative.
We visited different regional and district offices, provided frontline
service to customers and held meetings with all the members of our management
echelon in each province.
Our observations from these visits will be integrated into the current
transformation programme. Cynics will ask, 'how does this transformation differ
from the ones before?', 'why should we believe you when you say this will
work?' Boldly they will say, 'You will fail again!'
But we have dug deep into the very heart of rot and this plan addresses
itself systematically and fundamentally to the very core of the problem.
We have developed a plan that does not merely tinker with the existing
machinery, but that seeks radically to transform everything that has to do with
this organisation. We have paid and are paying detailed attention to people,
leadership and systems all of which constitute the pivot of our
interventions.
Since 2004 all we have tried to do was to transform the Department of Home
Affairs into a Department that serves its customers well and with respect.
Until we have achieved this objective we will not stop trying and will not
be dissuaded by momentary failure, cynicism or criticism.
The demand for our services is growing and our customer base is growing more
complex and understanding this is key to the pursuit of our objectives.
We thus need to harness all the support and energy we have to for the task
at hand and build the requisite capacity to implement the ambitious and
demanding plans and service delivery targets we have set ourselves.
We are thus hard at work to establish a winning and change management
process that will include coaching, creating a shared need for change, defining
a vision, mobilising stakeholders, making change last and monitoring, learning
and adapting.
We are developing an even more radical overhaul of our systems and business
processes to create seamless and convenient service and for this, we need a
strong leadership that possesses complex skills and competencies.
We have not taken it for granted that this strong leadership will emerge of
itself and automatically but we have placed this issue of strong leadership at
the very heart of our conscious endeavours.
Further to this, we will develop a common management framework that will
guide all our management and leadership everywhere so that they know exactly
what we expect of and from them.
Consistent and persistent training and development for all our leadership
echelons and people as a whole shall become a vital feature of this
transformation. At the same time we will continue to act decisively to plan our
future by investing in succession planning.
The successful implementation of our internship and National Youth Service
(NYS) programmes is a clear indication of our Department's commitment both to
capacity building and to responding to the plight of the unemployed youth.
During the past financial year the Department recruited 148 interns and 374
youth in terms of the NYS programme.
The Department intends to launch a Learnership Programme that will afford
matriculants the opportunity to get a qualification on immigration services
that is registered with the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA),
which process is already at an advanced stage.
During this year, we will dedicate about R72 million towards the recruitment
of 200 more interns and 300 NYS participants.
At the same time we have continued to pursue the joint Education and
Democracy Campaign with the Department of Education aimed at inculcating civic
consciousness and the values of democracy among Further Education and Training
(FET) college students and the youth in general.
During the month of June we shall complete the first leg of this campaign in
Upington, Northern Cape and we must express our gratitude to the Department of
Education and in particular the honourable Enver Surty, the Deputy Minister,
for a very convivial partnership we have been able to forge during this
campaign.
Related to this we continued to pay urgent attention to the colossal
challenge of protecting children from exposure to potentially disturbing,
harmful, inappropriate materials and from sexual exploitation in films and
publications.
Once again we must draw our nation's attention to the fact that child
pornography is the fastest growing of all Internet businesses, estimated to
have been worth USD19,4 billion in 2006 growing from USD3 billion in 2005.
More than 20 000 images of child pornography are posted online every week,
approximately 20% of all Internet pornography involves children and there are
approximately 100 000 websites that offer illegal child pornography.
But while such information may enrage or frighten us, it will not alter the
conduct of those who take pleasure or profit in the exploitation of children
unless we are prepared to be decisive in our decisions and actions to protect
the children.
The proposed amendments to the Films and Publications Act are designed
precisely to crack down on this and are a clear indication of the government's
resolve to reinforce the global effort effectively to combat this crime.
We are happy that the portfolio committee has decided to exempt the media
and broadcasters from the pre-publication classification requirement and insist
that the amendments to this Act were never a back-door attempt on our part to
muzzle the media.
We hope, however, that the media will one day become interested in the
pursuit of the objective to protect the children and stop viewing children as a
source to enlarge their bottom line by reporting on them only when it makes
sensational news that sell the newspapers.
Child pornography and the exposure of children to pornography must be made
an abomination in our society.
In a survey conducted by the Films and Publications Board (FPB) in 2006
among learners in Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal on this matter of the
exposure of children to pornography, it was found that:
* 67% had watched a pornographic film
* 64% had seen pornographic images on the Internet
* 81% know their friends had pornographic images on their cell phones
* Internet and cell phones are more popular amongst the youth than traditional
means such as magazines
* 70% of the pupils in the schools surveyed in Gauteng and the Western Cape had
watched pornography as compared to 62% in KwaZulu-Natal
* Chat rooms on the Internet and cell phones are popular among children in all
provinces and very few of them were aware of the potential dangers from
internet predators who use chat rooms as hunting grounds for children.
What makes children even more vulnerable is that parents are ignorant to the
danger faced by their children, making it important to make the parents aware
of their responsibility to educate their children about and protect them from
the Internet and online dangers and to become actively involved and aware of
their children's online activities.
The Ministerial Task Team on Child Pornography was ultimately established
and launched in December last year and we are happy that the honourable
Annalize van Wyk (MP) agreed to become its chairperson.
The task team has already achieved the very important objective to forge
strategic partnerships with mobile phone operators and internet service
providers, the public broadcaster and other government departments and has
already assessed the work done by all these institutions to help in the fight
against child pornography.
To assist the task team to assess the extent of the problem of child
pornography in South Africa, the FPB commissioned the Human Sciences Research
Council (HSRC) to conduct research on both the extent of this scourge in the
country as well as the capacity available to deal with it in the form of laws,
policies and institutions.
The results of the above-mentioned research will be ready later this year
and will further inform both the task team's programme of action as well as the
agenda for the planned Conference on Child Pornography in later this year.
The objectives of the campaign to curb child pornography and inappropriate
and easy access to pornography were further bolstered by the Department of
Public Service and Administration's (DPSA) request to State Information
Technology Agency (SITA) to:
* monitor usage of the internet by government employees
* implement filters that will deny access by government employees to web
content that is deemed inappropriate such as pornography, audio-video and
others
* investigate the implementation of spam filters.
Every department and province is expected to develop and implement an
Internet and Electronic Mail Management Policy; and the DPSA will develop a
general internet usage framework policy for guidance to departments during the
first quarter of 2008.
The FPB has taken great strides in correcting the irregularities that were
highlighted by the forensic audit and received an unqualified audit for the
2005/06 financial year. Compliance with corporate governance will be further
buttressed by the proposed amendments to the Films and Publications Act.
During the 2007/08 financial year, the FPB receives R19,2 million.
Strategic priorities for this financial year include:
* the implementation of an effective knowledge and information management
system
* the implementation of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
Strategy that will ensure that the FPB is up to date on new technologies that
impact on content delivery and media distribution and is able to classify and
deal with content distributed outside of traditional means
* the development and implementation of a stakeholder relationship management
strategy, involving both national and global partners
* the strengthening of the implementation and enforcement of the Act through
the further development and maintenance of organisational capacity and
capability.
During this financial year, R212 000 will be allocated to the Government
Printing Works (GPW). GPW is a trading account and is thus able to fund and
sustain itself through its profits.
We are happy and proud to report that the GPW is now beginning to extend its
services throughout the region and continent. We will continue to position it
as such, as the best security and specialist printing agency in Africa.
Early this year, the GPW won the contract to provide the African Union (AU)
Diplomatic and Service Passports which were successfully delivered on 25 May,
on Africa Day.
This AU Passport shall serve to inform us on what we need to do further to
improve our own document.
In May, the GPW was further requested to print examination papers for the
junior certificate in Malawi and we promise that this too will be accomplished
to the great satisfaction of our Malawian client and to the pride of South
Africa.
These may seem like a few projects but they serve as a strategic springboard
into the rest of the continent.
In 2006, the GPW assisted the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) with
the provision of the ballot papers for the DRC general elections.
All of these strides have made the corporatisation, modernisation and
relocation of the GPW to a new and more convenient site all the more
urgent.
In this regard and working jointly with the Department of Public Works the
process towards the relocation of GPW to a specially designed complex is
underway. While we cannot set a deadline for the completion of this project, we
trust that it shall be completed soon enough for us to realise our goals.
The GPW has invested in research and development and we are now in a
position to produce documents, especially passports with even more enhanced
security features.
As we indicated during the previous Budget Vote, comprehensive work is
underway to overhaul our passport system with a view ultimately to develop an
e-passport. This includes:
* developing a new coat of arms to replace the current old one
* introducing new and more complex security features and
* working with SAPPI, we have developed a new high security paper of
international standard to be used to print security documents, thus eliminating
our reliance on imported paper.
Furthermore, the GPW will also establish a forensic laboratory capability to
analyse passports, identity documents (IDs), visa labels or any high security
face value documents in order to complement other law enforcement agencies in
the fight against identity fraud.
Meanwhile, a new passport production system that will improve the efficiency
of manufacturing passports with improved security features has been sourced and
will be ready for operation before the end of this financial year.
This will also enable us finally to take the necessary decisions to dispense
with the temporary passport because we will then have the capacity drastically
to increase the production and printing of our passport, thus improving the
turnaround time.
During the past financial year, we made available to the GPW an additional
R150 million to support the equipment replacement programme and therefore
additional equipment will be procured during the course of the year. The
critically important process of the corporatisation of the GPW into an
efficient and effective specialist security printing agency is now happily
approaching the end of the first phase.
Towards this end the following has been completed and will in the next few
weeks be taken to Cabinet for approval:
* the business case for the envisaged specialist security printing entity
* an interim board to oversee the transformation process
* the draft Bill that will provide the relevant legislative framework.
The finalisation of the process to convert the GPW into a specialist
security printing agency is urgent to ensure that we finally address the
crucial matter of the secure and efficient production and printing of all our
security documents.
All of the work we must do at the GPW must be aligned and in sync with the
transformation currently underway in the Department.
We are acting with urgency because we want our documents to be trusted and
the process to produce and print them to be efficient, tight and
trustworthy.
We understand that our country pays a heavy price as a result of ID theft
and fraud related ID and travel documents.
We will put an end to it all! This then is how we intend to spend our budget
for 2007/08.
Thank you!
Issued by: Department of Home Affairs
7 June 2007
Source: Department of Home Affairs (http://www.dha.gov.za/)
