Hon Chairperson, Minister Dlamini- Zuma, my little girl over here Lerato, who has come to support her father, and hon members, emanating from the redesign of the business architecture of the department, as well as the adoption of a new operating model intended to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our front offices, we shall, commencing in July this year, begin visiting some of our frontline offices to engage our management and officials and thus begin to intervene decisively in front-office operations and frontline services.
This will also give us the opportunity to enforce the wearing of name tags among our officials to ensure strict compliance with the President's instructions. These front-office interventions will focus, among other things, on: one, operations management; two, customer service; three, front- office renovations to change the look and feel of our offices; and four, process implementation to ensure that the redesigned work process begins to be embedded across the entire organisation.
We will begin to roll out the centres of excellence, which will be model offices intended to provide excellent customer service.
We intend to review our overall management and approach to refugee affairs, which should entail the legislative framework, processes and systems.
Part of this should include a heightened focus on stamping out corruption and the factors that give rise to it. We will also formally establish the Musina Refugee Reception Centre, to be followed in the coming financial year by the construction of asylum-seeker processing offices in different provinces.
We also intend to review and relaunch the campaign against xenophobia, to be anchored on forging partnerships between and within government departments and tiers, and, most importantly, local communities. Greater focus will be given to training, stakeholder management and public education.
We must here today express our concern at xenophobic sentiments which seem to be resurfacing in certain communities. We call on religious and other community leaders, on MPs, MPLs and councillors, to play a leading role in facilitating dialogue and mediation in communities wherever conflict involving our immigrant communities may arise.
South Africa values immigrants, because they make a significant contribution to our economic development and cultural diversity, and enhance our humanity as a people.
Our officials are the mainstay of our department, the pivot around which it is anchored. Without them, there can be no transformation. Accordingly, it is in them that we must make the most significant investment, because no amount of technology can replace them.
In this context, one of the key challenges is to recruit the right people, with the right skills and attitude, and to place them in the right positions.
We will pay greater attention to enhancing the leadership and management cadre of the department through recruitment, training and development. Partly to achieve this, and given that as matters stand there is no training institution in the country that meets our skills requirements, we have decided to introduce the Home Affairs Learning Centre of Excellence, and consequently we will this year finalise its business case and benchmark it with the best practice in both the private and public sectors.
We are pleased to report that we currently have a total intake of 760 young people involved in the National Youth Service in the department, 457 of whom are female and 303 male. At the same time, during the 2008-09 financial year, we had 191 interns, placed in all specialised areas in the department. During this financial year, we plan to recruit 300 youths for the National Youth Service, as well as 200 for the internship programme.
Hon Chairperson, information services constitute one of the most important strategic areas of our work and provide essential support to our core business. Our key target for this financial year is to build the required organisational capacity and stability in the branch, through the appointment of competent senior leadership.
As hon members will recall, the Who Am I Online project, which is intended to integrate our IT systems as a whole, was, at our request, investigated by the Auditor-General and, based on the Auditor-General's findings, a decision has been made to conduct a forensic investigation.
IT preparations for the 2010 World Cup are advanced, and we are confident that we will have our IT infrastructure ready to facilitate the movement of keen soccer fans.
Hon Chairperson, during the past financial year the Government Printing Works achieved numerous milestones, the most important of which was the construction of the new passport factory and the acquisition of the new passport machine. During this financial year we will conclude the conversion of the Government Printing Works into a government component, which will enable it to recruit and retain the skilled artisans the organisation requires to discharge its mandate and overcome historical problems. Once this process is completed, we will also appoint the board and complete the establishment of the new leadership and management structures.
We can make bold to say that we are well on our way to transforming the Government Printing Works into a modern and high-security state printer. We shall continue this year to acquire even more state-of-the-art machinery to enhance our printing capacity and services and place the Government Printing Works in a position to enhance its competitiveness. We have also made major strides to relocate the Government Printing Works to a new facility conducive to modern and high-security printing functions. We are working with the Department of Public Works to prepare it for these purposes. Meanwhile, the passport factory has moved to a new facility, and will soon be followed by the rest of the organisation.
Once the Films and Publications Amendment Bill is assented to, its implementation will include, among other things, the application of the new governance structure which will improve the board's efficiency. Furthermore, the Bill will strengthen and widen the Film and Publication Board's scope to protect children from harmful material.
We are pleased to report that the Film and Publication Board has been accepted as a member of the International Association of Internet Hotlines, Inhope, a move that will strengthen our co-operation with other member countries in the fight against the heinous crime of child pornography.
We will continue this year to wage a sustained campaign against child pornography to meet this obviously growing challenge in our society and, as part of this, we will make further improvements on the Internet hotline we launched last year.
We are working with law enforcement agencies and NGOs, as well as the 2010 Local Organising Committee to ensure that there is heightened focus on child protection against the many paedophiles who will come into our country pretending to be soccer fans during the 2010 World Cup to ensure that the World Cup is child-friendly.
Hon Chairperson, these challenges are many and varied, but, working together, we are certain that we can and will do more. We wish to emphasise that the select committee has to exercise its oversight responsibility, but we expect from it robust engagement, going hand in hand with constructive criticism, as well as suggestions as to what we need to do. Once again we say, working together we can do more. Thank you very much. [Applause.]