WATERVAL – As from June next year, the “easy-to-fake” identity documents will be invalid, as great changes are afoot to replace them with the hard-to-fake smart card documents, said Home Affairs Minister, Mrs Nosiviwe Mapisa Nqakula, during her campaign aimed at correcting errors in documents issued by her department.

The campaign that was also aimed at creating opportunities for the country’s residents to rectify erroneous details on their documents was held at the Waterval Stadium last Thursday. According to the Minister, community members whose ID’s, passports, birth certificates or marriage certificates have errors such as misspelled names, wrong dates of birth, incorrect photos, or sharing of the same ID number, are requested to visit the Home Affairs offices countrywide to rectify the mistakes.

A pensioner, Mr Samuel Munakisi, from Chavani Village, told the Minister that last year on August 20, an official who claimed that he was dead chased him away at the paypoint. “I went to the local Home Affairs offices to make inquiries and I was told that on June 14, 2004, I had been knocked down by a vehicle at Brits. Since then, I am still waiting in vain for the new ID that I was instructed to apply for,” he said.

A number of people who were queuing to rectify the mistakes on their documents at the gathering told Mirror that they were unable to rectify such errors, because they were expected to pay R180.

In responding to residents’ questions, Mapisa-Nqakula said “I now realise that the main problems are with my staff members who do not yet understand “people first” principles. As one of you said that we are understaffed, that is not true; the issue is that there are some rotten apples, Home Affairs Minister, Mrs Nosiviwe Mapisa Nqakula who are not doing their work, as all they do is to hang up their jackets and go to the taverns to imbibe during working hours. I want to assure you that, once you can expose them to us, we will deal firmly with them.”

In condemning the slow process of issuing of ID’s, birth and marriage certificates, the Minister said that individuals must get their ID’s in six weeks time after the application, while the birth certificate is obtained the same day. In encouraging people to distance themselves from ID scams, Mapisa said: “Expose all corrupt officials like you did when we even saw a local headman on a national television programme facilitating testimonials to illegal immigrants. I was embarrassed when I saw a headman being involved in a wrong activity. Who are we going to trust if our traditional leaders are doing that? Just tell these illegal immigrants not to buy the documents, but to visit our offices and we will assist them. If they buy those documents, we will arrest and deport them back to their countries.”

Mapisa also urge her staff members to stop blaming computers for the errors on their documents as chances are limited to make such mistakes since the computer is operated by them. Single parents, according to the Minister, are no longer supposed to be chased away while going to obtain birth certificates for their children.

She further claimed that her department would be establishing mobile offices in the villages soon. Mirror can reveal that the campaign that forms part of the na-tional Imbizo week which started on April 7 to April 13 was hosted in Waterval, following the arrest of five individuals who were screened on an SABC Special Assignment Programme while facilitating documents and testimonials to illegal immigrants early this year in the area.