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The scrapping of the green ID book is coming soon as home affairs deals with challenges of those living abroad and some of their offices not having capacity.
Conversations on scrapping the green ID book have come to the fore again after President Cyril Ramaphosa claimed during an address on Sunday that these have been exploited by undocumented foreigners for identity theft and criminal activities.
After the announcement, this is what you need to know:
According to deputy director-general for operations at home affairs Thulani Mavuso, they have not been able to scrap the green ID book because some South Africans living abroad still rely on it when applying through missions. On the other hand, some permanent residents are currently not eligible for smart ID cards.
“Some locations, especially abroad, where South Africans live, still apply for green ID books in the missions. But also, we have permanent residents who have not been eligible to get smart IDs. We have resolved that particular problem.”
Mavuso said the location of some home affairs offices in SA that don’t have smart card capability adds to the continued use of the green book.
“We have a joint partnership with the banks. By the end of the year, we will have 750 branches where the footprint will be expanded.”
He also admitted that the continued use of the green ID book has been problematic for years, particularly due to vulnerabilities that have reportedly been exploited by undocumented migrants and criminal syndicates for identity fraud.
“This is the reason we had some IDs blocked. There were instances where we found some green book IDs existed without a birth record.
“We had to investigate those matters and cancel those IDs. Other cases dating to the 90s: an ID number generated on the book and birth record not matching. That is why we are digitising birth records. This helps identify IDs issued fraudulently.”
He added they are very close to exceeding their goal of ensuring that 38-million people have smartcards before scrapping the green ID books. The number of people with smartcards now stands at 29-million.
“Last year, we did over four million smart ID cards. We are very close to achieving the goal. What we are trying now is to encourage South Africans that they can walk into some banks like FNB, Capitec and Standard Bank to apply for smart ID cards, which can take up to 10 minutes at most. This saves people having to stand in long queues at our offices.”
Sowetan
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