Question NW308 to the Minister of Home Affairs
19 March 2024 - NW308
Roos, Mr AC to ask the Minister of Home Affairs
With regard to the project to employ 10 000 graduates to digitise Home Affairs records, for every functional and operating office, (a) what are the respective locations of the offices where digitalisation will occur and (b) how many (i) graduates are currently employed in terms of the project and (ii) records have been digitised as at 31 August 2023?
Reply:
(a) The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) will be utilising five buildings to digitise the 340 million records.
(b)(i) As per my reply in Parliamentary Question 2220, the recruitment of the 10,000 youth graduates is being rolled out in three phases. The advert for the first 1st 2000 cohort of unemployed graduates was published in the 2022/23 financial year, leading to the initial employment of 1405 graduates. This number has been decreasing due to youth finding better opportunities elsewhere. As of 31 January 2024, a total of 1142 youth were still in the employ of the Department and have been posted at various locations, in all provinces. The advert for the 2nd cohort closed on 03 March 2023 and yielded 2951 qualifying candidates out of the 439k applications received. In December 2023, the Department issued 2550 appointment letters to qualifying applicants. This brings the total number of young graduates employed for the digitisation project close to 3,700. The 3rd and last cohort of youth will be recruited in the 2024/25 financial year.
(b)(ii) As of 29 February 2024, the Department had digitised 31 419 990 images which translates to 714 016 records. Records consist of paper records and microfilms.
END.