NELSPRUIT – Applications from the public for new smart ID cards will open next month. Ms Naledi Pandor, minister of home affairs, announced last week that her department would invite citizens to begin applying for what it calls “a more secure identity document according to their dates of birth”.
Politicians and their support staff have been given the opportunity to apply for the new ID cards. Mpumalanga premier Mr David Mabuza, who applied for his new ID last week, took the new document into possession on Thursday.
“The process is easy and simple,” he said at the local home affairs office. “People will like it and we encourage it.” The bar-coded ID books currently in use are being phased out over the next few years.
The department has set a target of issuing 100 000 people nationwide with the new ID’s by the end of March. At present there are only three offices in Mpumalanga where cards are issued: Nelspruit, Witbank and Middelburg. Offices in Piet Retief and Ermelo are currently being equipped to follow soon.
Mabuza said the government would help them to try and get people to apply. Pandor requested that people be patient as the required digital facilities are installed in more offices.
According to Pandor, people will be invited to apply for the cards by their month of birth. She emphasised that people should wait to be invited to apply. “Don’t just come, we will invite you to do so in your month of birth,” she said.
It costs R140 to apply for the smart ID cards, but those under 16 years as well as pensioners will receive their cards free of charge.
The minister explained that the new cards are much more difficult to forge. “I think it is going to help us begin a real clean-up of the National Population Register because firstly you have to present yourself -you cannot lift the lamination to switch photographs.
“It is all paperless, digital and your personal biometrics details are recorded and encoded in the chip embedded in the card… so it is high-level technology that we are talking about and clearly it is a vast improvement on the document we have now.”
