Yes, the department has a Late Registration of Birth, what we call LRB process in place, to ensure that qualifying applicants are assisted with birth registration, where young persons were unable to obtain their ID documents as a result of not having evidence of birth registration. Regarding this issue of not leaving the hospital without the birth certificate, I have already mentioned how we are going to solve the problem for the future. But for the moment, we have programmes to help sort them out because we are not yet doing so.
Upon meeting the requirements and approval from LRB, the applicant is allocated with an ID number and a birth certificate is generated as a result. The children who thus meet the requirements for applying for an ID document, when they turn 16 years and older, the department has this memorandum of understanding with the Department of Health to address these concerns, and I think that I've already underlined that it's not only a memorandum of understanding now, it was a memorandum of understanding in the past. But now it's a joint
programme. When it is ready, we are going to launch it jointly with the Minister of Health.
At the present moment, anybody who comes to take an ID or a birth certificate without any prior notice of birth, they do get it. It's only that it takes a longer time, and maybe that is where the complication is. If you Aron Motswaledi who is already 14 or 15 years and you are in need of a birth certificate, we are not going to give it to you in 48 hours or 13 days like we do with all the other people. It's not possible. We have got start investigations and some of them take time.
We have got to send inspectors to the home where you say you were born. We will also go to the schools you attended; we visit the hospital must give us records whether you were really born there; churches must may also give us records that you actually started Sunday school and they should indicate that they know you and we will also consult with the traditional leader to tell us that actually they know your family.
Chairperson, we do all those investigations before we issue a document because, issuing somebody a document wrongly is very dangerous for the country. So, the kids that are affected will
eventually get their documents, but it will take longer and I think people are complaining because of this issue. It's not that they do not get their document, but they get them after a long time and after the results of investigations are satisfactory.
There is an example I gave about the lady from Hazyview whom I invited to my Budget Speech. She has got four children but she discovered 20 years ago when she was told by Home Affairs officials that she actually has got seven children. She indicated that she has only four children, but was told that the records are actually indicating that she has seven kids. She discovered that when she went to register her last born in March 1999, because that is when the boy was born.
The records were showing that she delivered a baby boy in December 1998. Therefore, it was impossible to deliver another one in 1999, which is three months later. So, she was told that Home Affairs cannot register the one born in 1999. She indicated that she doesn't know anything about the boy born in December 1998. The matter was even reported to the police and there's a case number for it. The police investigated, and they couldn't find a head or tail.
The lady had to stand up on her own and after 20 years she found out about her three children who are not South African and who have been recorded as hers. How did they appear in her documents? There is Home Affairs official who was bribed to work with the perpetrators. She even went to the home of that Home Affairs official and when she arrived there, there was a lady that was wearing black clothes, you know what that means in our culture. The lady in black clothes confirmed with her that the person she is looking for is her husband, but as she could see from wearing black clothes, her husband was no more.
She then asked the wife about his ID. But the wife went inside the house and came back with a box full of IDs. She said: "I don't know what you are looking for, but these are his tools. He used to work with this box." When she checked inside the box there were different IDs. So, these are some of the things that we are trying to stop. Now, how do we stop them if every South African that has been born doesn't leave the hospital without the birth certificate or leaves the hospital with a birth certificate?
After a period of 20 or whatever years later, they can't come back to Home Affairs to change their stories and put people under their IDs? That's why we are going to ask you to run a campaign with us.
Once we put up a system with the Minister of Health, it must become a matter of life and death which people will know that they will not leave the hospital without the birth certificate of their kids. In fact, I want it even to be the responsibility of the CEO of the hospital who must also be held accountable, not only the Home Affairs officials.
For instance, even in the 391 hospitals where birth registration is happening, sometimes babies are not registered when they were born over the weekend, due to the fact that there were no Home Affairs officials to register them. We want to make it a law that even if the baby was born over the weekend, on Monday the birth certificate should be issued for the baby. The CEO of the hospital must come to Home Affairs and give a list of the babies born over the weekend.
There are also equipment that have been set in hospitals, like the hospital next to Hazyview for officers to print real original birth certificates that can be generated from hospitals, not just a mbombay [fake] copy. Therefore, the problems I have indicated will come to an end. Thank you.