The South African Minister of Home Affairs, Naledi Pandor, announced the arrival of smart card identification documents (IDs) for the country by July this year in her budget speech on Thursday, May 9.
HumanIPO reported yesterday on the implementation of Smart Card IDs in Nigeria as MasterCard, the Nigerian Identification Management System (NIMS) and several banks collaborated.
Home Affairs in South Africa will begin with the distribution of smart cards to replace traditional South African IDs by July as part of an eight year-long staged plan.
“I now wish to announce that it is my intention to invalidate duplicate IDs by the end of the year at the stroke of a pen,” Pandor declared.
An estimate of three million prints per year is forecasted, with a predicted transition period of four years.
“This will be a major step towards creating a modern, reliable population register,” Pandor said.
The minister explained the duplicated book should not be issued any longer as it leads to “a lot of problems”.
The microchip technology is expected to eliminate identity fraud.
Release of birth certificates will also cease as child trafficking and abuse is too simple.
As plans are underway to develop the infrastructure at offices nationwide, the government plans to escalate the speed of birth registrations to occur within the same month of birth.
Birth registry is considered the entry point to registry security.
More than 602,000 births were registered in 2012, with an estimated eight per cent increase this year.
Immigration will also be controlled easier through this system, a much-needed incentive on the grounds of border control.
Led by Home Affairs and in partnership with the police, defence force, revenue service and departments of health and agriculture, the project will introduce tracking technologies to monitor asylum applications.
Applicants will be updated via mobile messages on the status of the application.
In 2010 1.9 million of the people living in South Africa were immigrants, making up 3.7 per cent of the population.
