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By Mayibongwe Maqhina 
5h ago
Cape Town – The Department of Internal Affairs is investigating close to a million “blocked” identity documents that turned out to be suspicious, duplicate or fraudulently issued with falsified supporting documents.
This was revealed by the Minister of the Interior, Aaron Motsoaledi, when he responded in writing to the parliamentary questions of the deputy of the EFF, Lorato Tito.
Tito had asked about the total number of blocked ID cases in his department.
He also wanted to know how long it took his department to investigate and resolve the issue of blocked IDs.
In his written response, Motsoaledi said that the department has 813,343 identified cases of blocked identity documents that fall into different categories.
“The aforementioned total includes cases that have to remain blocked since these cases are already investigated and / or marked for elimination so that they are not reused as such,” he said.
Motsoaledi claimed that when the department provided services to citizens and non-citizens, it encountered cases of identity theft in which identification was acquired illegally, fraudulently, where supporting documents were forged, or inadvertently where identity numbers are duplicates.
“In all these cases, the markers are established in the National Population Registry as a means to guarantee the integrity and credibility of the National Population Registry.
“Furthermore, markers are set in identity numbers, such as cases that are called ‘under investigation’ for various reasons or causes.”
Motsoaledi also said that there are 517,249 duplicate IDs for cases where people have multiple ID numbers and in other cases two people share the same ID number.
There were 17,747 fraudulent cases of deaths, 222 cases of immigrants who did not qualify for automatic citizenship, and 8,214 cases from South West Africa.
Others included 145,619 illegal immigrants, 70,323 cases under investigation for various reasons, and 53,978 cases referred to identification to investigate fingerprint records.
Motsoaledi said that when the department receives cases of this nature, they first have to investigate these cases to establish if indeed the identification was acquired illegally and those identity numbers are definitely blocked.
“When there is sufficient evidence to the contrary, the markers are raised accordingly.”
He also said that some of the reasons primarily attributed to IDs being blocked and markers being placed in the National Population Registry include duplicate ID numbers and illegal immigrants who obtained SA documents fraudulently.
There were also false records of births, marriages and deaths, as well as for investigation purposes of suspicious identifications obtained fraudulently with falsified supporting documents.
Motsoaledi said it takes the department approximately six to eight weeks to resolve and finalize the blocked identifications as long as all the supporting documents required to resolve these cases have been obtained from the applicant.
“This includes the time the client visits the main office and the receipt of all requested documentation to resolve the case in accordance with standard operating procedures,” he said.
Political Bureau
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