Chairperson, hon Minister of Home Affairs, hon Ministers and Deputy Ministers, hon members, my daughter, Lerato, ladies and gentlemen, first and foremost I would like to take this opportunity to pay special tribute to our fallen colleague, Dr Molefi Sefularo.
Chairperson, 100 years ago, on 31 May 1910, after the bloody South African War - inaptly dubbed the Anglo-Boer War - the Union of South Africa was established as a "white man's country" where the black majority was purposely excluded, denied universal franchise and treated as cheap labour. The Union finally formalised the political unity between the Brits and Boers, and for almost a century race was to play a decisive and divisive role in the politics of our country. Our country has traversed a long journey to where we are today. While we still carry with us the painful imprints of our past, today we are a nation and people steadfastly committed to constructing a new future based on unity, equality and respect for each other's rights and diversity.
The Republic of South Africa born 16 years ago is a firm negation of the racist chauvinism of 1910 and a resolute affirmation of the historic vision that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.
The Department of Home Affairs, which has the honour to present its Budget Vote today, is part of this vision. It is determined to do all it can to affirm all our people's yearning to belong to a common nation, share a common identity and toil towards a common future. We remain resolute in our commitment never again to allow this department to be used to divide South Africans, but to be part of the broad movement to affirm our people's common identity and citizenship.
In order to enhance our skills base and our leadership capabilities, we announced plans to establish the Home Affairs learning academy. Because we committed ourselves, we are pleased to announce that we did finalise the academy's business case and a Home Affairs qualification, focusing on the core business of the department and customer care. The learning academy will begin to be operational in this financial year. We have further decided that the academy will deal with policy development and knowledge management for the department.
For this financial year, our training will focus on the training of supervisors and front office officials in customer service, operational excellence and other needs-based interventions.
Furthermore, because the situation at Home Affairs is not normal, we have met with Business Unity South Africa, Busa, and agreed that they shall, on our behalf, engage the banks to second managers to train our officials, especially those involved in front office operations, in order to improve customer service.
Furthermore, to contribute to the programme of enhancing youth employability, the department intends this year to recruit 244 young people for the internship and 300 for the national youth service programmes. The recruitment of interns is already under way and they will soon join the department.
In the past financial year we committed ourselves to improving the operational efficiency and effectiveness of refugee affairs. Our intention was to improve the turnaround time for the determination of refugee status and significantly increase the quantitative number of decisions made by our officials. We wanted to radically improve the protection mechanisms for genuine asylumseekers and refugees, in line with our international obligations.
In this regard, we have improved the number of days it takes to issue section 22 permits from seven days to one day. We have increased the numbers of our refugee status determination officers and we have increased the number of their decisions made from an average of five decisions per week to an average of seven decisions per day.
We still face a serious challenge to improve the quality of the decisions and compliance with newly designed methods of work and business processes. However, we intend to establish an additional centre in Bloemfontein during this financial year.
More importantly, this year we intend to begin the complete overhaul of the strategic thrust of refugee policy and legislation. This overhaul will impact extensively on the asylum processes, the details of which shall be announced during the course of the year.
Through this exercise, among others, we hope to separate economic migrants from genuine asylumseekers. This is precisely why we began engaging various stakeholders, such as trade unions, on the issue of economic migrants, with the purpose to evolve a policy on the matter. We intend to continue with this very important exercise and broaden the stakeholders' engagement and, as the Minister indicated, to bring legislation to the National Assembly.
Last year, we also committed ourselves to intensifying the campaign against xenophobia. We are pleased to report that as part of this effort we have already trained 102 community development workers and 23 secondary schools in affected areas in Gauteng. We are also working with the SA Police Service and other key stakeholders, professionals and activists.
Fighting xenophobia is ultimately the responsibility of the public as a whole, so this programme must be premised on mobilising communities at large. In this financial year, we will improve the department's institutional capacity to lead and co-ordinate sustainable interventions by creating a directorate. We will finalise and launch the programme.
As you would know, the Films and Publications Amendment Act was finally signed into law by the President. Both the Act and the regulations are now operational. We will finalise the appointment of the council of the Film and Publication Board within 30 days.
We continued to make strides in the past financial year, particularly in the fight against child pornography through mass outreach campaigns. We are still awaiting the report of the Law Reform Commission on our request for advice on the possibility of prohibiting pornography in certain areas, including the Internet and mobile phones. We are committed to having legislation in this regard, in order to protect our children. Those who want to view pornography must do so in the privacy of well-regulated adult shops.
It is for this reason that we celebrated with most South Africans when MultiChoice stepped down from the idea of establishing a 24-hour pornography channel. We applaud all South Africans who stood firm in their rejection of this nefarious idea and regret that MultiChoice even thought of this in the first instance. We must steadfastly continue to refuse to accept that pornography be brought into our living rooms.
Among the priorities for this financial year is that we develop a turnaround strategy to ensure the alignment of the Film and Publication Board structures, systems and processes with the new amendment Act.
We will also establish a dedicated unit to oversee the roll-out of the Fifa World Cup projects regarding child protection, focusing on the roll-out of a massive public awareness campaign on the risks to children. An amount of R15 million has been dedicated to this project.
Over the past few years, we have been seized with the challenge of the transformation of the Government Printing Works, GPW, to position it as the security printer of choice for government and the SADC region. We have decided to position it as a key player in the smart card and passport industry.
In this regard, we are pleased to report that we have completed the conversion the of GPW into a government component. We should soon complete the appointment of its advisory board in terms of the Act. At this stage, we are in the process of changing the organisational structure of the GPW and finalising the migration of its staff to the new structure.
The conversion has made it possible for the GPW to negotiate and implement a special salary dispensation for artisans, which should help address the challenge of the recruitment and retention of skilled artisans for the organisation.
Following years of adverse audit opinion, the GPW is well on its way to a clean audit. We have finally recruited a well-qualified and experienced chief financial officer. We will further procure more modern equipment in order to prepare the organisation for the new challenges ahead. And in a few months we will complete the second pavilion that will result in the relocation of the entire factory from that old dungeon at the old premises to a new and refurbished plant.
Regarding the debt that was reported in the portfolio committee, we wish to inform hon members that by the time it was reported to the portfolio committee the department had already made a formal acknowledgement of the debt. By the end of March this year the debt was paid up. New tariff requests are being made to National Treasury in order to avoid the recurrence of the same problems in future.
Chairperson, I wish to conclude by thanking the Minister for her studious and steadfast leadership and support, as well as the director-general, senior managers and all the officials in the Ministry and department for their support in the execution of our mandate. I hope my daughter was not as bored by this speech as she was last year.
Hon members, we commend this Budget Vote to you. However, we regret that you need to expect the report from Sita because they were the ones that were doing this report on the smart card. I want to promise that Sita will not provide the portfolio committee with a sanitised report but with the report as they have done it. That is part of the process of informing the portfolio committee. Thank you. [Applause.]