awaited smart-card id to get trial run next year 
15 February 2008

After years of procrastination the home affairs department has given a time frame by which it will introduce the anticipated smart card, which is to replace identity books.  At a media briefing in Parliament, home affairs director-general Mavuso Msimang said the card would first have a trial run at key institutions next year, before being rolled out to the public. “The current ID is extremely susceptible to forgery.  The idea with the card is it would be a big improvement in that you would have your photograph taken and laser-printed and captured onto this card,” he said.

SA’s identity documents and passports are very susceptible to forgery. Only last week it was reported that Britain planned to make South Africans pay nearly R1000 for an entry visa. This was in response to a huge scam involving South African passports.  Msimang, who is driving the much-needed turnaround strategy in the department, which has been plagued by corruption, said that when the card was first proposed nearly eight years ago, the idea did not take off. However, it now had department backing.

The department is costing the process needed to introduce the card, including the technology and durability expenses. The government would subsidise the card along the same lines as it does the ID book now, he said. Msimang announced that, since his appointment, 230 departmental employees had been either fired or suspended due to wrongdoing.  Msimang is the latest in a long line of directors-general trying to root out corruption.

On the future of Bosasa Operations, the private company running the Lindela repatriation facility near Johannesburg for the department, Msimang said the company’s contact was due for review in September. Bosasa, through its 100% owned subsidiary Leading Prospect Trading, got a verbal drubbing from the auditor-general and Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts, which demanded a list of shareholders.

Msimang said although the review would take place only later this year, his department had already asked the company how it did its costing.  There have been reports that the company may have inflated its infrastructure cost.“I think Bosasa has structured their contract in a way that would, say, disadvantage them in terms of their per capita costs. “There is no way people get given food three times a day, very good food, and who gets medication and all the other things that would cost about R80. “So I suspect that it has been good for them to show that the per capita cost is low and the other costs probably got embedded in infrastructure costs. We need to do it transparently,” he said.

Karima Brown,  www.businessday.co.za