Question NW717 to the Minister of Home Affairs
29 March 2016 - NW717
Lekota, Mr M to ask the Minister of Home Affairs
(1)Whether his department has a special section that deals effectively and expeditiously with every case of stolen identity, as well as with living persons erroneously and wrongly being declared dead through some criminal act or failures within his department; if not, why not; if so, (a) how many such cases had his department dealt with during the period 1 July 2009 to 29 February 2016, (b) how long did it generally take for such cases to be resolved and (c) how many cases have remained unresolved after a period of 90 days; (2) Whether he will make a statement on (a) the extent of the specified problems and (b) how his department was efficiently solving them?
Reply:
(1) Yes, the department has specialised units which investigate and deal effectively with identity theft resulting from illegal activities within the department and erroneous or fraudulent death registrations.
(1)(a) The number of cases of fraudulent or erroneous death registrations during the period for which statistics are available were 6113.
In the case of identity theft and fraud resulting from an identity document being lost or stolen whilst in the owner’s possession, this is a criminal matter and it is recommended that this specific question be referred to the South African Police Service, which handles these criminal investigations.
(1)(b) The turnaround time required to resolve cases is six to eight (6-8) weeks dependent on the nature of the submission by the citizen concerned and all required supporting documents to expedite the department’s investigation.
(1)(c) All reported cases where full supporting documents were furnished were concluded within 90 (ninety) days.
(2)(a) The department issues media statements and uses various forms of media to address the scourge of problems within the department and to inform the public accordingly. Some are addressed through print media (newspapers) or direct interviews on media shows. The department also uses this medium to inform and sensitise the public on matters such as identity theft and false death registrations.
(2)(b) The department is in the process of modernising its systems to curb the issues of identity theft (through the rollout of the Smart ID Card) and fraudulent death cases (through more stringent Registration procedures).