THE stakeholders from KSD Home Affairs Broader Stakeholder Forum in Mthatha hosted a meeting at Nelson Mandela Museum in Mthatha, with the aim of sharing information about the problems caused by the late registration of births, recently.
According to the Department Home Affairs spokesperson, Gcinile Mabulu, this meeting is where they share their information with stakeholders, so that they can pass the information to communities.
These stakeholders are made up of ward councillors, church leaders, community development workers (CDW), and more.
He said that some of the information is that people should use the appointment system when applying for their identity documents (ID) or passports, so that they can be given a date to come to these offices.
“Our aim is to reduce the high number of people who come to our offices to apply for their ID. Another problem is that some of the people do not have documents, even though we have tried by all means to take our services to communities,” said Mabulu.
He added that they used their mobile trucks from 2010 to take services to people, but they still find there are people who have the same challenge.
According to him, in order for them to get those people, they reach them through these stakeholders.
He said that they appeal to all leaders to bring those people so that they can be assisted. Mabulu said that when women want to give birth, they must go to hospitals so that it can be easy for their babies to be registered in the system.
“If the hospital does not have our equipment, they must go and register them within 30 days in order to avoid late registration of birth. Some of our hospitals have our offices because we are trying to avoid this problem.”
He added that this process is very important, to the extent that it becomes their target at Home Affairs.
“Each and every month we are forced to ensure that we have registered all these children.”
According to him, it is hard to do this work, more especially in hospitals where they do not have equipment.
He said that when the children are not registered in the system they struggle to get their benefits, even at the offices of South African Social Security Services (SASSA).
Chairperson for KSD Home Affairs Stakeholder’s Forum, Chief Zwelithobile Mtirara, said that since they started this forum they have seen the change in late registration of births, but there is still more to be done. He said their intention is to ensure that all women follow this rule.
“We also looked at the procedure where people apply for their IDs, using the appointment system. We find that they do not stick to their time given by the system.
“If the system said the person should be in our office at 9:00 to 10:00, he/she must do so,” said Mtirara.
