Home Affairs understaffed by 8000, says Gigaba

Source: The Citizen, 11/07/2018

At a press conference to announce upgrades to the Home Affairs system,
the minister let slip that despite the high unemployment rate, the
department was severely understaffed.
At a press conference where Minister of Home Affairs Malusi Gigaba and
director-general Mkuseli Apleni announced a series of upgrades to the
Home Affairs system, the minister said the department was understaffed
by roughly 8 000 people.
This comes a day after The Citizen reported that despite the high
unemployment rate in South Africa, some government departments and
provincial governments were still failing to fill thousands of vacant
posts.
This was revealed in the state of the public sector report released by
the Public Service Commission (PSC) on Tuesday.
Gigaba today let slip the information about his department at today’s
press conference meant for more positive news. It was intended for
announcing upgrades to the Home Affairs system that would see the
introduction of a paperless process for birth, marriage and death
registration in a phased approach.
According to Apleni, by next year Home Affairs should be fully
automated, and implementation will start rolling out.
Gigaba said the upgrades would entail interruption to ID and passport
services between July 13 and 20, with different scheduled dates among
the provinces.
The system upgrade will begin on Friday. Phase one includes the
automation of birth certificates for children younger than a year.
South Africans will no longer complete paper forms for birth registration.
Gigaba did, however, say written consent would still be required for
children not travelling with parents.
The minister said a new system whereby the details of parents would be
listed on their children’s passports would ensure these parents did
not need to travel with unabridged birth certificates when travelling
abroad �` unless the country they are travelling to require this.
He added that since the departments did not have enough revenue to
enact the desired upgrades and could not look to a cash-strapped
government for help, Home Affairs had partnered with banks to make the
changes possible.
He said measures would be put in place to ensure these banks were not
granted access to any clients’ personal information.
Apleni was quick to point out that no staff would be impacted by the
changes, with the current staff set to be reskilled.