Let me start with the birth certificate because that is where everything starts. We would like a situation where every child born is not allowed to leave the hospital without a birth certificate. At the moment, out of the 4 000 health facilities in South Africa, only 1 445 are where birth can take place. Unfortunately out of the 1 445, only 391 can issue that birth certificate the day you leave. If your child is born today and tomorrow they are going home, they will go home with a birth certificate. We want to extend this to the rest of the facilities where birth takes place.
Three weeks ago we met with the Department of Health, I led the delegation and Minister Zweli Mkhize led the delegation from Health. They are working on this programme. We are putting resources and systems in all our hospitals so that when you leave you do not leave with a notice of birth but with a real unabridged birth certificate.
According to the programme we have just drawn, we believe that by early 2022 all the 1 445 facilities will be doing that. At the moment, we want to register birth within a period of 30 days but there are people, unfortunately because we are living in the continent of Africa, who come at the age of 13, 14 or 15 for the first time to ask for a birth certificate. They have never been
anywhere before. That is why we want to end that by making sure that when they leave the hospital they have a birth certificate.
Let me move to ID. Chairperson, the Department of Home Affairs' standard, which we are adhering to, is that once you apply for your ID it will take 13 days to get it. We do not want to go beyond 13 days; we can give you even in five days. Once you apply for your passport, we can give it to you within five days while our standard is 13 days. We demonstrated this during my budget speech in the National Assembly on 10 July. We brought two trucks here for members who do not have passports or smart IDs. It was on a Wednesday when they applied and on Friday we gave them their IDs. We gave them within 48 hours. We are able to do that. [Applause.]
Now, I was asked, if you do so for Members of Parliament why can't you do the same for an ordinary person on the street? We can do it but the problem is security because of the system we are using. When you have applied for an ID it can only be dispatched back to the office where you applied whereas all the printing is in Pretoria but we do not want to give it to you in Pretoria. It is ready; in fact, it is ready within 24 hours for those offices which are directly linked. When you apply today for an ID buy the end of the day it is printed in Pretoria and it will take 13 days because we are going to
look at the address, package it and send it by courier to the office where you have applied.
It will take sometime because we cannot use the post office. Not because the post office is not efficient but because we do not want fraud. The person who applied for it must be the one who hands it over. So, those are the turnaround times, we can do that already and we have demonstrated in the National Assembly as I have said.
When we discovered the lady who was married fraudulently I gave her an ID within 48 hours of discovering her after talking to her and also brought her during the budget speech.
There is also another lady whose son was displaced for 20 years without a birth certificate from Hazyview. The day we discovered her I called her in my office and 48 hours later we had given that boy a birth certificate and ID at the same time. So, we are able to do that. [Applause.]