Chair, I would firstly like to welcome the Cuban delegation in the gallery, led by Dr Enrique Morel. Can you please stand up? [Applause.] I will come back to the question by hon McIntosh. I also welcome the representatives of the Auditor-General in the gallery and I want to thank them for their support and oversight in our department. I would also like to thank all of you who participated in the debate and all who are here at this late hour, so that we are not speaking to the chairs.
I will not deal with individuals, because I don't have a lot of time. Don't be offended. I just want to thank you for the compliments and we accept them with great humility. I am sure those are the things that keep us going and keep us trying to improve more and more.
In terms of the criticism, we are also happy to receive constructive criticism. When we come to the portfolio committee, we never hide our challenges, because we know that the best way of eating an elephant is one bite at a time. If you try and swallow it all, it will never happen. We are able to improve, because we take one bite at a time. We accept the criticism and you can be sure that we are slowly working on everything. We hope we will come here one day and say that we are perfect. We are not perfect, but are facing this task.
I just want to say a few things around permitting. I couldn't say everything because I only had a few minutes. We have plans to automate the permitting applications, just as we have plans to automate the ID and passport applications. We have those plans, and the director and acting chief director have also been doing a lot to improve the permitting. I am sure you have heard the briefing about all those plans, so I will not go into them.
The issue of the duplicates is a challenge. We have cleared a lot of duplicates, but there are still quite a number of them. There are those that we have actually cleared, because we have combed our population register to check if there are duplicates that we can find. Some of them, as was explained in other meetings, came when the different population registers were being put together. We have been able to pick out some of them even before the people complained to us. We have a plan to publish some of the names next month so that people can come forward, and so that we can try and resolve them before they even see they have a duplicate. We are trying our best. We know that it is a big problem.
With regard to the maritime borders, we accept that they have not been looked after properly, but we will start to improve Durban and Cape Town. We have a project there. We will train more immigration officers, particularly those specialising in maritime ports of entry. This year, we hope to put at least 76 more properly trained officials at those ports. We have also identified accommodation in the harbours, because we didn't have proper accommodation there. The public enterprises have given us accommodation. We have been working on it and we accept some of your criticisms. Be assured that we are working on them.
On the question of women and disabled persons, we agree that we are not where we should be. That is why we did not fill all the posts of the provincial managers, because I was presented with almost seven men. Therefore I said no, we must go back and look for more women. I am quite aware of it and therefore we have acting managers in some instances. We want to find women so that there is a better balance.
The advice from hon Mnqasela that we should speed this up is accepted. However, I hope he can also give the same advice to his party, especially to the leader, hon Helen Zille, that women in this country can be in positions of leadership, not just herself. [Laughter.] [Applause.] We accept it, but please send it back to your own party.
When it comes to the FPB, I don't know why everybody is suddenly agitated about the Film and Publication Board, FPB, being in Home Affairs. Yes, I don't know how it came about. I found it there, but we are quite happy to work with the FPB, unless you are saying that we are not doing our work well with the FPB. Otherwise, we have no problem.
The Government Printing Works, GPW, will always be under Home Affairs. That is not going anywhere. We have also appointed the CEO. And he is a cardiologist and he gets to the heart of the problem very quickly. [Laughter.]
On a more serious note about the baby, we have not received any enquiries about this baby in our office. We have checked with the SAPS, but the SAPS is not sure whether this happened in our office. I think we should first make sure. Rather than publicising something, we must first make sure of the facts. There is a story that this woman was with the social worker and everything. Please, let us not rush into making conclusions.
About the late registration of births, LRB, we actually want to do away with the LRB. We want everybody to have an ID at 16.
Uma ningaletha bonke ogogo, sikwazi ukusheshisa sibanike omazisi ukuze ngesikhathi siluvala lolu hlelo lokubhalisa ukuzalwa sekudlule isikhathi [late registration of birth] bonke babe sebebatholile. Ngakho-ke baletheni ngobuningi babo - nibalethe uma nibathola. Kodwa-ke ... (Translation of isiZulu paragraph follows.)
[If you can bring all the elderly, that will enable us to speed up the issuing of IDs so that when it's the cut-off date for late registration of births, everybody would have received them. Therefore, I urge you to bring them in their numbers - bring them when you get hold of them.]
You must remember that it was your party, when it was in government - apartheid - that made those makhulus [grandmothers] to be 50 when they were 70. [Applause.] You are the success of the National Party. [Interjections.]
Let me come to the questions that hon McIntosh raised.