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| The old green barcoded ID that will be replaced soon. Source:southafrica-newyork.net |
The South African Minister of Home Affairs,Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma announced on 25 April that her department is aiming to replace the old green Identity documents (ID) with the new smartcards.
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| Minister of Home affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma shows off her new smartcard. Source:eyewitnessnews.co.za |
The minister emphasised that the smartcard will go a long way towards stamping out corruption in the Home Affairs department, she said that this is more like a transition from the dompass to the smartcard. The smartcard will allow citizens to have modern identification cards rather than the outdated book, which is easy to forge. The card is not easy to forge, it is easy to distinguish between the forged and the real card. The card would be linked to a system containing all the department's data including the population register and information register on refugees and immigrants. The pilot phase roll out to the public would start with people applying for identification documents for the first time. The machines the department had for the project were "small" and able to roll out only about R3 million cards a year. The pilot phase will be active in full force hence they still need more machines which would take 18 months to manufacture to the departments specifications then in the next 2 years the bigger roll-out will take place. The first face of the project will cost about R5 million. The second face, with the larger still-to-be-built printing machines would raise the cost of the project. Home Affairs officials will be able to read information on a card by placing it close to a mobile reader that used a radio frequency to communcate with the chip. The reader would also take a person's fingerprints and instantly provide identity details to the officials.
I am proud of the department and its plans for us the citizens but, am I the only one who is wondering though as to,what took them so long to implement this...?
wont the smart cards thingy get easily lost?
ReplyDelete@Mr Gift I dont think so hey, they are quiete handy and convenient to carry around,as a student yourself you carry your student card around campus everyday in order to get access to all the university's facilities...so in my opinion they wont get lost instead they are much better than the old green ID book that couldn't even fit in a person's pocket
ReplyDeleteAs much as this is a good initiative my main concern however is the safety of the smartcard, seeing that with the green document it was much easier to leave it indoors when travelling. A number of people loose access cards and student cards on a daily bases, and the smart card is no different to all of them. And I assume that the cost of loosing such a card will be high, this counting as a disadvantage to people who are less fortunate, because it is easier to loose a smartcard. Has the department of home affairs put certain measures in place in the case of less fortunate people somehow loosing the card and not having the means to replace it?
ReplyDelete@Thomas the Minister said that the cost of printing the old IDcards will be the same as the new ID smartcards,but the department of Home Affairs will be using government printing works to minimise the costs...as for the replacements,it wont cost any citizens nothing just like it didn't in the past and the only difference between student cards and the ID smartcards is that you dont have to carry it on a daily basis, so you keep it in a safe place at home after using it
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