Chairperson, on behalf of the Minister and the department, I want to very quickly extend my gratitude to all the hon members who have participated in this debate. Before I respond to members, I do want to extend an invitation, on behalf of the Film and Publication Board, to all members to come and sit and watch with us a screening of the movie entitled Trust this afternoon at 13:00 at the BMW Pavilion at the Waterfront. The movie will only be on circuit in October in this country and we are inviting all of you to a sneak preview this afternoon. We do hope that you will be able to join us. I thank, in particular, the chairperson for a very considered speech. We certainly agree. The issue of xenophobia was raised by both the chairperson and the hon Rantho. We immediately would want to lend our voice to those of you in the House who have seen it fit to condemn such tendencies. We have recently deployed our stakeholder forums - which I spoke about in my speech - very effectively in Soweto, where we heard that there was tension brewing between local businesses that are owned by South Africans and local businesses that are owned by foreign nationals.
These stakeholder forums provided a platform for dialogue, and the dialogue was then able to defuse the kind of tension that arises out of what is essentially misunderstanding and a lack of appreciation that most foreigners who are legally in our country, actually contribute to the opportunities of South Africans, rather than detracting from them. I do think and hope that the hon members, who are leaders in their communities, would take the opportunity at every turn to raise these issues with people who have and hold other views and attitudes.
Certainly, on the vacancies, we have heard - and, more importantly, the leadership of the departments who are here have heard - the hon members on the issue, and we will certainly have to pull up our socks as a department on that score. We may say to you though that as far as our vacancies pertaining to management are concerned, we have managed to fill almost 100% of those vacancies. Clearly, we have to do more; and more we shall do.
An internship programme is already under way. I, for one, when I came to office in November last year, found a very able young lady in my office who is an intern, and I must say it was a very fruitful engagement and a mutually beneficial time was experienced by all in the office.
On the issue of the budgets - raised very starkly by many members, including the hon Mashamaite - the local government elections, together with the World Cup hosted by us last year, which of course was a onceoff expenditure, contributed partly to the reductions you have referred to in relation to the fiscus. All departments will stand before you, as hon members, to ask for money. We do hope that whenever we do that, members will support our call.
On the issue raised by the hon Zulu, I believe that a lot was lost in the translation, as I only caught part of the speech. I hope I have got the right end of the stick. The reasons for the increase in tariffs really relate to the cost of production of these documents. In her speech the hon chairperson raised the unfortunate phenomenon of having approximately 750 000 documents in our possession in our offices, which are uncollected reissues. This costs a huge amount of money. One of the aspects raised with us by National Treasury was the stipulated cost of production. We have done that, and it was approved by National Treasury. Certainly, reissues of IDs will cost R140.
That is not to say that the first issue of the ID will cost you that amount of money. Indeed, your first issue is issued to you free of charge. You will only have to pay that money when you do not look after your ID and when you lose it, or if you have forgotten your ID at home and it is more convenient for you to go to Home Affairs and apply for a temporary ID and use that instead.
Let me also deal with the case of disasters. I have had the opportunity over the past few months to visit many communities, particularly in the informal settlements where fires have ravished people's homes and all their belongings. In such instances we do issue and reissue those IDs free of charge.
On the issue of passports, I assume, hon Zulu, that if you don't have R400 to spend on a passport, you will not be able to buy a ticket on British Airways to fly to London either. That clearly is not an argument we can accept.
Lastly, hon Faber, if you can stop speaking for a moment, I can address it. It must be wonderful, hon Faber, to live in cloud-cuckoo-land. I don't understand how on earth you can think that Home Affairs is a sausage factory, producing sausages in less and less time.