Chairperson
Today is 26 June, the 54th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter at the historic Congress of the People held in Kliptown.
Among others, the Charter proclaimed that: “All shall be free to travel without restriction from countryside to town, from province to province, and from South Africa abroad”, and that: “Pass Laws permits and all other laws restricting these freedoms shall be abolished.”
54 years later, the question is, how far have we gone in realising the vision and injunctions of the Kliptown meeting?
From the outset we must emphasise it that we remain deeply committed to the principal task of building a Department that will play a meaningful role in the implementation of the five key pillars of the electoral mandate of the African National Congress (ANC).
In the brief statement we shall make today, we shall complement and add to the detailed and comprehensive address made by the Minister, in which she outlined the strategic priorities of the department for the current financial year and beyond.
Chairperson
As you are aware, we have redesigned and overhauled the business architecture of the Department and adopted a New Operating Model.
One of the most distinct features of this model is the clustering of provinces into four zones to improve efficiency and the effectiveness of our front office.
As part of our swift and prompt response to the address of President Zuma during his budget vote speech, commencing in July of this year, we will travel to all our zones to engage our frontline management and officials and visit some of our offices so that we can begin to intervene decisively in front office operations and frontline services.
This will also give us the opportunity to ensure that the changes that were introduced as part of our Turnaround Programme are applied consistently across the organisation and begin to be embedded in our regular operations so that they become part of what we do daily.
However, the President will be pleased to know that the Department of Home Affairs already started some years ago to implement the “name tags” project. We shall, following the President’s instructions, enforce this strictly to ensure total and strict compliance.
During the course of this financial year, we will begin to change the “look and feel” of our offices, and change the citizen and customer experience where they interact with out department through a series of interventions which would involve improving our leadership and management, increasing our capacity, enhancing our processes and systems so that we improve the quality of the services we offer.
This should be achieved through the gradual refurbishment of our offices during the course of the year, which however will not be completed in this year alone given just how extensive this process should be.
During the course of this year, we will roll out six Centres of Excellence which would be model offices that extend beyond public area refurbishments, and focus on all aspects of the DHA offices intended to provide excellent customer service. We plan to roll out these Centres in our busiest centres in each province over the MTEF period, the first of which is planned for South Western Township (SOWETO) during this financial year.
Our focus in this area will ensure that we are, as the Executive, as close to the frontline operations as possible.
Chairperson
The Minister has already said that we intend to review the overall management and approach to refugee affairs, which should entail the legislative framework, processes and systems and we will in due course present the details of our review strategy.
What is clear is that it cannot continue to be business as usual. Accordingly, in addition to what the Minister has said, we will focus on stamping out corruption and the factors that give rise to it. We will also formally establish the Musina Refugee Reception Centre, to be followed in the coming financial years by the extension of the asylum seeker processing footprint to zones, as the needs dictate.
Based on lessons and observations of the regrettable incidences of last year which saw the inhuman and barbaric attacks of foreign nationals in our country, we will be intensifying our Campaign against Xenophobia.
This campaign will be anchored on forging partnership with other government departments, the provincial and local tiers and most importantly local communities where immigrants reside. It will focus on training, stakeholder management and public education. We will vigorously take the issue of immigration and xenophobia to the public.
We must here today express our concern at some xenophobic sentiments which seem to be re-surfacing in certain communities and urge our people to solve all their problems peacefully. We call on religious and other community leaders, especially our MPs, MPLs and Councillors to play a leading role in facilitating dialogue and mediating in communities wherever and whenever conflicts and differences may arise involving our immigrant’s communities.
South Africa values immigrants and we believe that they make a significant contribution to our economic development and cultural diversity, and enhance our humanity as a people.
Chairperson
Given the nature of home affairs, as a key service delivery department, the role of our officials remains the most critical and decisive factor if we are to succeed in our work.
Our official are the mainstay of the present turnaround strategy, the pivot around which is it anchored. Without them, there can be no turnaround. Long after the consultants have gone, our officials will remain steering the wheel of service delivery, discharging the mandate of home affairs and fulfilling the service delivery objectives of government. It is to them that we must make the most significant investment because no amount of technology can replace them.
In this context, one of the key challenges in the Department is the urgent need to optimise the capacity and efficiency of the Human Resource (HR) function to ensure that it fulfils its role in assisting us to deal with the complex task of recruiting the right people, with right skills and attitude and placing them into the right positions.
Having successfully migrated all our 63 senior managers from their positions in the old structure to the new structure, we will this year finalise the migration of all our officials below salary level 12 into the new structure.
We will pay greater attention to enhancing the leadership and management cadre of the department through proper recruitment and training and development.
Partly to achieve this, we have decided to introduce the Home Affairs Learning Centre of Excellence in order to train and develop the distinct skills requirements of our department.
As matters stand, there is no training institution in the country that meets our skills requirements in National Immigration and Civic Services.
To ensure the speedy roll out of the learning centre, we will this year finalise its business case and benchmark it with the best practice in both the private and public service.
Chairperson
We are pleased to report that we currently have a total intake of 760 youth involved in the National Youth Service in the department, 457 of whom are female, and 303 male.
At the same time, during the 2008/09 financial years, we had 191 interns place in all specialised areas in the department.
During this financial year, we plan to recruit 300 youth for the National Youth Service (NYS) and 200 for the internship programme.
Through this programme, we gave hope to our youth by significantly improving their employment opportunities and we will ensure that our recruitment processes take their experience and acquired skills into account.
We regularly engage in programmes during the year to enhance the capacity and competencies of these young people once they have been recruited so that they can better serve the Department and accumulate requisite knowledge and skills.
Chairperson
Information Services constitute one of the most important and strategic areas of our work. Following on what the Minister said, we have made strategic advances in rolling-out some of the critical technological systems to improve service delivery.
Our key target for this financial year is to build the required organisational capacity and stability in the branch, through the appointment of competent senior leadership to ensure that it is able to provide the necessary support to the core branches in the department.
Without optimising the performance and capacity of this branch, we will not be able to drive many of our key projects.
As honourable members will recall and this is already in the public domain, the Who Am I Online Project, which is intended to integrate our Information Technology (IT) systems as a whole was, at our request, investigated by the Auditor-General.
Based on the AG’s findings, a decision has been made to conduct a forensic investigation. Once this process is concluded a report will be presented to the Parliament.
Chairperson
During the past year (2008/09), the Government Printing Works (GPW) achieved numerous milestones, the most important of which was the construction of the new passport factory and the acquisition of the new passport machine.
During this financial year, we will conclude the conversion of GPW into a Government Component (GC) in terms of the provisions of the Public Service Act 30 of 2007, Section 7A.
We can make bold to say that we are now well on way to transforming the GPW into a modern and high security state printer. We shall continue this year, to the tune of R367 million to acquire even more state of the art machinery to enhance our printing capacity and services and place GPW on par with other major local and foreign printers in the same market.
The conversion into a GC will enable GPW to recruit and retain skilled artisans the organisation requires to discharge its mandate.
Once this process is completed, we will during the course of the year appoint the Board, which has never existed, and complete the establishment of the new leadership and management structures.
We have made major strides to fulfil the long awaited relocation of the organisation to a new facility conducive to modern and high security printing functions. We have identified and are working with the Department of Public Works to prepare it for these purposes. Meanwhile, the passport factory has moved to a new facility, and shall soon be followed by the rest of the organisation.
Chairperson
As you will recall, the Film and Publication Amendment Bill was returned to the National Assembly by the President for certain further amendments, which were made.
Once it is assented to, its implementation will include, among others, the application of the new governance structure which will improve the Board’s efficiency. Furthermore, it will strengthen and widen the Film and Publication Board (FPB)’s scope to protect children from harmful material.
We are pleased to report that the FPB has been accepted as the member of INHOPE (International Association of Internet Hotlines). This will strengthen our cooperation with other member countries in the fight against the heinous crime of child pornography.
We will continue this year to wage a sustained campaign against child pornography to meet this obviously growing challenge in our society and, as part of this; we will make further improvements on the internet hotline we launched last year.
We are working with the law enforcement agencies, Non Government Organisations (NGOs) and the 2010 Local Organising Committee to ensure that there is heightened focus on child protection against many paedophiles that will come into our country pretending to be soccer fans, to ensure that the 2010 World Cup is child friendly.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Home Affairs
26 June 2009
