Durban — Identity documents continue to be a challenge for many South Africans.
Irate uMlazi resident Thabani Sibiya, 44, discovered that he has been sharing his ID number with someone else since 2014.
Sibiya said the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) issued a new ID number to him but it was also problematic because it also belonged to someone else.
Since 2018 his life, he said, had been at a standstill.
Sibiya said he had not been able to access his insurance funds after being retrenched as a security officer and his bank account had been frozen.
“I am worried that if I die my family will not be able to bury me legally because of my identity number belonging to someone else,” he said.
Home Affairs said it was taking decisive action against fraud involving identity books and cards.
The department called on people who were currently in possession of blocked IDs to provide written reasons and representations within 30 days why their IDs should not be cancelled.
The submissions must be sent to Sylvia.Phasha@dha.gov.za
The DHA said it aimed to resolve the decades-old issue of wrongfully blocked IDs while reducing the number of fraudulent documents in circulation. Some of the IDs were originally blocked as far back as 2005 for a range of reasons. These include the biometric system flagging the documents as duplicates held by illegal immigrants, or because the ID holder had died.
Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber encouraged members of the public to use this opportunity to ensure the department conducted a just and equitable process to unblock IDs that had been wrongfully blocked.
“At the same time, the gazetting of these decisive measures underscores our commitment to clamp down on fraud, and to move with urgency to resolve long-standing challenges while upholding the rule of law,” said Schreiber.
In a letter, political commentator Cometh Dube-Makholwa said the DHA portfolio was fraught with all kinds of problems, genuine job-related problems, intimidating just by their sheer magnitude, but made worse by millions of undesirable characters who had made South Africa an ideal destination for their wayward lifestyles and deviant behaviour, drug and human trafficking, corruption illegal immigration and all other kind of criminality.
Dube-Makholwa said Schreiber seemed to enjoy all the challenges inherent in this type of job.
“In less than three months his department, which had to deal with a backlog of 306 000 visa and other permit applications, had already reportedly cleared 50% of the backlog, and is determined to make sure that by Christmas there will be no more backlogs,” Dube-Makholwa said.
Clearing the backlog was essential, Dube-Makholwa said, to create the breathing space the department required to undertake systemic reforms and digital transformation to improve service delivery, attract skills, investments and tourism and hopefully create thousands of jobs.
“Exciting, it looks like we are in for a big shake-up in service delivery under the Government of National Unity. They also work overtime hours to deal with the workload,” Dube-Makholwa said.
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