The African Diaspora Forum has welcomed the government's decision to include undocumented people in its Covid-19 vaccine programme, saying it should be used to provide a picture on the number of these migrants in the country.
Chairperson of the forum Vusumuzi Sibanda said the organisation has been calling for the government to find a way of recording details of undocumented people and this was an opportune time.
“If indeed people are going to be inoculated, including those that are undocumented, that should provide some form of statistics and information of people living in the country. That would be very welcome for us. It will help the country to know who is living within the borders of the country. It will also help to stop this assumption that people that are committing crime are undocumented migrants. If anyone of them commits the crime we will know that they have rather than making an assumption.
“Once you document people ... you will also know how much of services should be provided in a certain area. You will then know, for example, how many police officers need to be deployed in a particular area in terms of the number of officers against the population,” Sibanda said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Monday that the government’s phased Covid-19 vaccine programme will be given for free to anyone eligible and willing to take it. The announcement came on the day when the first consignment of one million doses of Covishield vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India arrived at OR Tambo International Airport.
“We aim to make the vaccine available to all adults living in SA, regardless of their citizenship or residence status. We will be putting in place measures to deal with the challenge of undocumented migrants so that, as all other people, we can properly record and track their vaccination history,” Ramaphosa said.
The government is yet to give details of how it plans to capture information on undocumented migrants and whether this will include using a biometric system.
Previously, the government was criticised by the forum for excluding undocumented people in the R350 Covid-19 grant.
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