Unabridged Birth Certificates Now Issued


By Carika Ferreira    11-Feb-2013 14:12 UTC+02:00

ID Document

With the aim of issuing secure, credible and accurate birth certificates, the Department of Home Affairs announced that it would no longer issue abridged birth certificates but it will instead only issue unabridged birth certificates to parents of newborn babies.

The Minister of Home Affairs, Naledi Pandor, made the announcement at the Home Affairs FSI Building in Arcadia on Thursday. The new practice of issuing only unabridged birth certificates will commence on 4 March 2013. Pandor explained that the current abridged birth certificates were too easy to forge.

“It is easy to reproduce the abridged certificates illegally – criminals can copy it easily.”

The abridged certificates contained only the names and Identity Document (ID) of the newborn baby and the mother and no detail of the other parent’s details, while the unabridged certificates contain full details of both parents and their ID numbers. It will be issued on the spot at no cost to parents. Pandor said the unabridged certificates would help the government to have more a secure national population register.

By no longer issuing unabridged birth certificates the department intends to move towards a paperless environment as well as curbing fraud, she added. In the past, it took the department a long time to issue the unabridged certificates but it now committed itself to a speedier process.

Issuing unabridged certificates on the spot would further assist parents not having to join long queues at the department and also wait for weeks for the certificates.

The move to the new process was the result of the current Information Technology (IT) modernization project, aimed at enhancing service delivery. The unabridged certificates would also accommodate single parents but it would have more information of the parents concerned. Orphans will also be able to have unabridged certificates

 


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