Chair, my hon brother, Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, MECs, hon members of the NCOP, Chairperson of the Select Committee on Social Services, distinguished guests, I take this opportunity to thank the Chairperson of the Select Committee, hon R N Rasmeni and the hon members of the select committee for their support and oversight. I would also like to extend my appreciation to the hon Deputy Minister, Malusi Gigaba, as well as the director-general and his team of hardworking senior officials - especially those who are honest - for their dedication and commitment.
We would also like to join the rest of the country in expressing our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of our late Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Molefi Sefularo. He has joined the rest of our heroes, heroines and forebears who liberated this country - heroes like Chris Hani, Oliver Tambo, Solomon Mahlangu and many others who made sure that we are here today, after liberating us from the oppression that started in this very month in 1652, and ended in this very month in 1994.
Everyone will recall that, last year, standing on this podium, we announced that we would embark on a birth registration and identity document, ID, campaign. I'm happy to report that, led by His Excellency President Jacob Zuma, we indeed launched the campaign in Libode in the O R Tambo District Municipality in the Eastern Cape, on 23 March. The launch of this massive national campaign was preceded by two pilot projects in the Sisonke District Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal and the O R Tambo District Municipality in the Eastern Cape.
The reason for the pilot was to make sure that, when we started the campaign, all the building blocks were there and we would have learned some lessons. Some of these building blocks are the launching of a number of stakeholder forums at local level and in all provinces. To date, we have established 10 district municipality stakeholder forums and 67 local municipality stakeholder forums, and we will be completing the establishment of these forums in the rest of the country during the course of the year.
The reason for establishing these forums is to make sure that people in all the provinces participate directly in the processes of service delivery at Home Affairs, in a manner that will empower them to monitor performance, combat corruption and provide support to the department, as well as assist members of their communities who may be experiencing problems in accessing the services.
The campaign's key objective is to secure and protect the National Population Register, NPR, and make sure that it is accurate. The outcomes of this campaign should be the birth registration of every child within 30 days of delivery; the issuing of identity documents to every South African 16 years and above; and the eradication of late registration of birth by December 2010. Late registration of birth refers to everyone who is over 30 days old, but, more importantly, those who are over 15 years of age, trying to get an ID, but not having birth certificates. They have to start with the process of late registration.
I'm happy to say that, in order to clear the backlog of late registration of birth, we have established 176 screening committees countrywide, and these committees have processed 354 840 people since the campaign started. I would like to say that the trends show that the provinces that have a bigger backlog on late registration are KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga. The majority of those are people between the ages of 15 and 30, and women. These provinces should take note and make sure that they join us in this campaign to eradicate this problem.
The difficulty is that if women are not registered and they have children, they can't register those children. This means that those children are not able to access the grants or any of the social services that the country provides. As a result, we can't take them out of poverty. Therefore, this campaign is also trying to assist in the eradication of poverty.
I'm also happy to say that we registered 1 147 000 children last year, and that, since the launch of this campaign, we have also issued IDs to 834 453 first-time applicants. This is 200 000 more people than the previous year. The department is also implementing an urgent review of legislation impacting on registration, births, deaths and marriages.
I would also like to say to the members here, particularly because they are from the provinces, that Home Affairs considers the ID important for life in general and not only for elections. I am asking them to join us in the campaign now, because there'll be no special campaign during election time from now on, not even for the 2011 local government elections. This means that the ID campaign is now and not then. So, please join us.
As everyone is aware, we, as a country, are about to host the most spectacular world event, the 2010 Fifa World Cup. As Home Affairs we are ready to welcome the world to our beautiful shores in the spirit of ubuntu and love. We are proud to report that, in preparation for this event, and in line with the Fifa guarantees, we are introducing, for the first time ever, an events visa. This means that anyone who has a ticket for the World Cup will get a visa free of charge at our missions abroad.
We're also introducing what we call an Advanced Passenger Processing system. We have trained airline liaison officers who will be based abroad, who will process the passengers at the points of departure, before they even board the planes, so that we try and eliminate those who may be hooligans, or other people who are involved in any offences, who would not be welcome. We are going to deploy these airline liaison officers in May this year.
At our airports, particularly the major international airports, there will be dedicated lanes to speed up the processing of Fifa World Cup visitors.
At the land ports of entry - Lebombo, Ficksburg, Maseru Bridge, Oshoek, Beitbridge and Kopfontein - there will be one-stop border posts for the purposes of the 2010 World Cup, so a person won't have to go through two border posts; we'll all be colocated with the neighbouring countries and a person will go through one stop only. These are some of the preparations that are in place. We have established a 24-hour operation centre which will look at all the incidents and collate information.
I'm happy to say that, in partnership with the SA Revenue Service and other relevant departments, we are going to roll out a movement control system that will enable us to both secure and facilitate movement of people at our ports of entry. That system is already in place at O R Tambo International Airport and will be rolled out at the other 33 ports which we have designated as priority points before the 2010 World Cup, and the rest after the World Cup.
Concerning the department and its challenges, one of the challenges that we are facing is, of course, corruption. As a department we have started to build on what is there and we are enhancing our anticorruption unit. From now on that unit will be headed by a deputy director-general, DDG, and we'll be appointing specialists in this area. In addition to the unit we are also improving our systems to make sure that it's not easy to engage in illegal activities.
We have introduced what we call biometric access control. Instead of just using one's user number, one must also use one's fingerprint so that we know exactly who dealt with what, in order to be able to follow the trail if we find some signs of corruption.
We're also happy that, having taken these measures during this campaign and also having conscientised the people in the provinces about corruption, we have, in the O R Tambo District in the Eastern Cape, already arrested two women and a nurse who colluded in the production of fraudulent clinic cards. Women were paying R150 for every fraudulent clinic card, and they were bringing the cards to us for us to produce birth certificates. The nurse and the two other women have been arrested. So, we are beginning to see the results of our campaign, but we would like everyone to assist us to make sure that this campaign is successful.
Last year I stood here apologising for problems we were experiencing with the backlog of passports, but today I'm happy to say that we have cleared that backlog. We don't have problems. [Applause.]
I'm also happy to announce that we have extended our track-and-trace system to the other documents. So now, whether a person is applying for a passport, a late registration or a marriage certificate, we are able to track and trace the document, link it to the person, and, via SMS, inform them about the stage at which everything is. We had said that we were going to open 13 new offices to expand access and our footprint. I would like to report that we indeed met and even exceeded our target. We opened 21 new offices: one in Gauteng; one in the Northern Cape; three in the Western Cape; three in KwaZulu-Natal; 11 in Mpumalanga; and two in the Eastern Cape. We have also upgraded others.
We also opened one refugee centre in Musina. We have relocated the refugee centre at Nyanga - it was creating a lot of problems for all of us and for the refugees - to Maitland, which has a bigger and more efficient office. The Deputy Minister will expand on some of those areas.
We are piloting an electronic queue management system in Khayelitsha. We hope that this system will assist us to manage queues better and also to determine how much time people spend standing in the queues, so that we can try and improve all the time. In Khayelitsha, just by using the electronic queue management system, we have already seen an improvement from 45 minutes to between 25 and 30 minutes.
Last year we said that to assist women to register their babies, we were going to connect hospitals to Home Affairs, so that women are able to register their babies whilst in hospital. We are happy to say that we now have 142 hospitals connected. We are hoping to connect 120 more this year. [Applause.]
I would like to give you a breakdown of this figure. Of the connected hospitals, 24 are in the Eastern Cape, 17 in Free State, 20 in Gauteng, 29 in KZN, 19 in Limpopo, 12 in Mpumalanga, eight in the North West, five in the Northern Cape and eight in the Western Cape. Those are the ones we have connected and, as I have said, we will be connecting more.
I would like to thank KwaZulu-Natal in particular, because they have agreed that they will accommodate Home Affairs offices in their one-stop development centres that they are building across the province. We are very happy about that, and we hope other provinces will do the same. [Applause.]
Of course, we had also committed ourselves to reviewing the immigration policy, and I'm happy to report that we have started with consultations. Some of you may have heard that we started consultations with Cosatu, and we are going to be continuing with other stakeholders. Once we have finished the consultations, we will come here for legislation.
Last year we had many vacancies for deputy directors-general, chief directors and directors. The vast majority of these posts have been filled and we'll continue to finalise the others.
I would like to introduce to you our new director-general, Mr Mkuseli Apleni, who replaces our former director-general, Mr Mavuso Msimang, and we hope that he will receive your support. We wish the former director- general, Mr Mavuso Msimang, all the best in his future endeavours.
I think I will leave the remaining minutes and have them added to my response time. I request that you support our Budget Vote. Thank you. [Applause.]