By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Department of Home Affairs says it will cancel the identity documents of former Miss South Africa contestant, Chidimma Adetshina, and her Mozambican-born mother.
This was confirmed by deputy minister Njabulo Nzuza during the Parliament briefing on Tuesday.
“We’ve done our investigations, we went through due process, we gave her an opportunity to make representation [and this] was not done,” Nzuza said.
Nzuza said, officials visited a house registered to Adetshina to track down her mother.
The deadline was Monday. Their documents will now be withdrawn.
He has confirmed that they’ve issued Promotion of Administrative Justice Act letters to both Adetshina and her mother.
“This step is a step before the IDs and passports can be retrieved. The owners of these documents can use them until they have been withdrawn by the department,” Nzuza said.
The deputy minister informed Parliament’s portfolio committee that its completed investigation was handed to the Hawks.
Adetshina won the Miss Universe Nigeria over the weekend, representing Taraba State, where her father is originally from. She entered the beauty pageant after withdrawing from Miss SA amid investigations on her citizenship.
She is set to represent Nigeria in the Miss Universe finale in Mexico City next month after she won the Miss Universe Nigeria title.
Meanwhile the department plans to recoup the cost of failed objectives from the officials responsible.
A multi-disciplinary task team have been studying the work of the department, searching for ways to tighten efficiency.
Human error in the processing of documents was a large area of concern, creating the perfect breeding ground for fraud and corruption.
The task team focused their energies on 25 functions of Home Affairs offices.
The three panellists giving their presentation to the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs on Tuesday, 29 October, were data analyst Warwick Meier, Director of CAJV Rose Bishop and Head of Legal Ricky Singh.
Meier found that of 51,000 various types of applications that were initially rejected, 11,000 were subsequently approved in a follow-up application.
Bishop said gross negligence or fraud on the part of adjudicators was found and this was referred to the Hawks.
“Notwithstanding that we are referring the matters for criminal persecution against the parties concerned, that we also start hurting the pockets of the officials in that we find a mechanism to be able to recover those costs from the official’s pension funds based on the outcomes of the disciplinaries,” Bishop told the portfolio committee.