Home Affairs 'needs clean up'

2007-12-07 17:37

Pretoria - Much still needed to be done to clean up the Department of Home Affairs, Director General Mavuso Msimang said on Friday.

He was reacting to the arrests of five Home Affairs officials and a former official at the Watloo Home Affairs office in Pretoria on Friday morning.

The six - three women and three men - were arrested following months of investigation into an illegal syndicate operating in the department.

The five were stationed at the births and marriages unit in the civic services branch.

The sixth person was dismissed last year, while the other five had been suspended.

Msimang said that the syndicate registered fraudulent marriages between South African women and male illegal immigrants.

After a few months, the marriages were nullified and the illegal immigrants applied for South African citizenship.

"The levels of service delivery are far from satisfactory; we have a very serious problem of criminality including our own people," said Msimang.

'Weak' IT system

Between January and October, 1 500 fraudulent marriages and 200 birth certificates were registered, using existent or dormant IDs of retired or transferred staff.

He said that the department's IT system was weak and passwords were being abused.

"We have a zero percent approach for corruption... it takes long to put IT systems in place, but we're going to get on top of this".

Msimang said the department needed to become smarter to reduce loopholes in the system.

"This is because of our liberal constitution - we need to be smarter, when we come across these things; we must move swiftly," he said.

According to the department, 189 officials had either been dismissed or suspended between April and September on charges including fraud and the misappropriation of state funds.

"This is a threat to national security because our institutions are supposed to provide services to the public," said Msimang.

The six faced charges of fraud as well as the nullifying of marriages.

They were expected to appear in court next week, he said.

- SAPA