Staff Reporter.
Home Affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi says that his department will propose new legislation to make it possible for people as young as 10 to get an ID card.
This is one of the measures he wants to implement to strengthen passport security in the country.
Speaking at a National Council of Provinces on Thursday (25 August), the minister said that Home Affairs wants more stringent border security and additional requirements for receiving important identification and travel documents in the country.
One of the mechanisms to manage fraud is to have more people on Home Affairs database, he said.
To achieve this, the minister said the department will propose new legislation to make it possible for people to get an ID at the age of 10 rather than wait until the age of 16.
The minister lamented that South Africa’s passport security has become a ‘laughing stock’, with several high-profile incidents involving fraudulent documents coming to light.
Motsoaledi said that the country’s passport was once respected globally. However, the security of the passport is under doubt, and ‘people laugh and make jokes when they see how the processes have been circumvented.
The minister noted instances of fraudulent documents being found in the possession of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Benin nationals, which has devalued the document internationally.
As part of the department’s fight against fraud, the minister said that Home Affairs is shifting the mechanics of the document to an Automatic Biometric Information System (ABIS), which will extend the current system to take into account a person’s fingerprint, photo, palm print, facial recognition as well as iris scans.
Earlier in August, Motsoaledi announced that further security measures were being implemented to protect the security of the passport.
The first of these measures is the end of transferrable and third-party collections and a new activation process that can only be completed by the applicant.
Motsoaledi said that passport applications currently allow for the document to be collected at any office in the country if applicants request that it be transferred. It also allows for the passport to be collected by a third party.
Compiled by Lehlohonolo Lehana.