The department of home affairs will not destroy more than 200,000 new identity documents gathering dust at its Pretoria headquarters because South Africans failed to collect them, before the local government elections, Minister Malusi Gigaba said on Thursday.
The minister told a Cabinet cluster briefing in Cape Town the department had 200,000 smart card and 5,000 green bar-coded identity documents that had not been fetched, despite sending notices to those to whom they had been issued.
He stressed that this was only at the head office, and that there more waiting to be collected in regional offices, from where they were sent back to Pretoria after six months.
“We will not destroy any documents between now and the date of elections to allow for those people who may still need to collect their documents to do so,” Gigaba said.
“It is quite important to emphasise this point that South Africans, once they apply for documents, must collect them. It cost quite a lot of money to print these documents. It is a concerning figure that there are 200,000 uncollected ID smart cards.”
Gigaba said the department had not conducted “an in-depth analysis” of the reasons why so many citizens failed to collect their IDs but some of the common reasons included that they had relocated since applying for them, or applied because they mistakenly thought they had lost theirs and later found them.
– African News Agency (ANA)
