Minister: old passports must go

THE Department of Home Affairs says it is phasing out manual passports in a bid to stamp out crime and corruption.

This week‚ 15 unused legitimate South African passports were seized from an al-Shabab courier in Tanzania.

The passports bore the photographs of people on the country’s watch list and one bore a striking resemblance to the “white widow” Samantha Lewthwaite.

Home Affairs Minister Hlengiwe Mkhize announced in her department’s budget speech that manually processed passports would no longer be issued‚ and that people would now have to apply for their passports at one of the country’s 179 live capture sites where photographs and fingerprints are digitally recorded.

Home Affairs director general Mkuseli Apleni said smart card IDs and passports had been introduced to phase out fraudulent passport use but up until now‚ the manual and digital processes had been running alongside each other. This system – where fingerprints were taken on paper and “the photo is taken under a tree somewhere” – created a “gap” where fraud could be committed. Mkhize said they would strengthen the work of their counter-corruption unit, which had since its launch facilitated 166 arrests – including 85 officials and 81 members of the public‚ working either alone or for syndicates – for fraud and other crimes.

Mkhize said the old National Population register would be replaced with a National Identity System. Part of this requires the replacement of 38 million greenbarcoded ID books with secure smart ID cards.

So far 6.8 million of these cards have been issued. — TMG