Chairperson, Ministers, Minister of Home Affairs and hon members, today is 26 June, the 54th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter. Among other things, the Freedom Charter proclaimed that all shall be free to travel without restriction from countryside to town, from province to province, and from South Africa abroad. It further said that pass laws, permits and other laws restricting these freedoms shall be abolished. Fifty-four years later the question is: How far have we gone in realising the vision and injunctions of the Kliptown meeting?
From the outset we must emphasise that we remain deeply committed to the principal task of building a department that will play a meaningful role in the implementation of the key tasks of the pillars of the electoral mandate of the ANC.
Hon Chairperson, as you are aware, we have redesigned and overhauled the business architecture of the department and adopted a new operating model. One of the most distinct features of this model is the clustering of provinces into four zones to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our front office. As part of our swift and prompt response to the address of President Zuma during his Budget Vote speech, commencing in July this year we will begin to travel to our zones to engage our front-line management and officials, and visit some of our offices, so that we can begin to intervene decisively in front-office operations and front-line services. This will also give us the opportunity to ensure that the changes that were introduced as part of the turnaround programme are applied consistently across the organisation, and begin to be embedded in our regular operations, so that they become part of what we do daily. However, the President will be pleased to know that the Department of Home Affairs already started some years ago to implement the nametags project. We shall follow in his further instructions to enforce this and ensure total and strict compliance.
During the course of this financial year we will begin to change the look and feel of our offices, and change the citizen and customer experience where and when they interact with our department, through a series of interventions which will involve improving our leadership and management, increasing our capacity, and enhancing our processes and systems, so that we improve the quality of the services we offer. This should be achieved through the gradual refurbishment of our offices during the course of the year, which however will not be completed in this year alone, given just how extensive this process should be.
During the course of this year we will roll out six centres of excellence, which should be model offices, intended to provide excellent customer service. We plan to roll out these centres in our busiest centres in each province over the MTEF period, the first of which is planned for Soweto during this financial year. Our focus in this area will ensure that we, as the executive, are as close to the front-line operations as possible.
The Minister has already said that we intend to review our overall management and approach to refugee affairs, which should entail the legislative framework, processes and systems. What is clear is that it cannot continue to be business as usual. Accordingly, in addition to what the Minister has said, we will focus on stamping out corruption and the factors that give rise it. We will also formally establish the Musina refugee reception centre, to be followed in the coming financial year by the extension of the asylumseeker processing footprint to zones, as the need dictates.
Based on lessons and observations of the regrettable incidents of last year, which saw the inhuman and barbaric attacks on foreign nationals in our country, we will intensify our campaign against xenophobia. This campaign will be anchored in forging partnerships with other government departments, the provincial and local tiers and, most importantly, local communities where immigrants reside. It will focus on training, stakeholder management and public education. We will vigorously take the issue of immigration and xenophobia to the public.
We must here, today, express our deepest concern at some xenophobic sentiments which seem to be resurfacing in certain communities and urge our people to resolve their problems peacefully. We call on religious and other community leaders, especially our MPs, our MPLs and our councillors, to play a leading role in facilitating dialogue and mediating in communities wherever and whenever conflicts and differences may arise involving our immigrant communities.
South Africa values immigrants, and we believe that they make a significant contribution to our economic development and cultural diversity, and enhance our humanity as a people. As a key service delivery department, the role of our officials is critical. Our officials are the mainstay of the present turnaround strategy, the pivot around which it is anchored. Without them, there can be no turnaround. Long after the consultants have gone, our officials will remain, steering the wheel of service delivery, discharging the mandate of Home Affairs, and fulfilling the service delivery objectives of government. 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 of the department is the urgent need to optimise the capacity and efficiency of the human resource functioning, to ensure that it fulfils its role in assisting us to deal with the complex task of recruiting the right people with the right skills and attitude, and placing them in the right positions.
Having successfully migrated all our 63 senior managers from their positions in the old structure to the new structure, we will this year finalise the migration of all officials below salary level 12 into the new structure. We will pay greater attention to enhancing the leadership and management cadre of the department through proper recruitment, and training and development.
Partly to achieve this, we have decided to introduce the Home Affairs learning centre of excellence in order to train and develop the distinct skills requirements of our department, given that, as matters stand, there is no training institution in our country that meets our skills requirements in national immigration and civic services.
To ensure the speedy roll-out of the learning centre, 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, and 200 for the internship programme. [Applause.]
Information services constitute one of the most important and strategic areas of our work. Following on what the Minister has said, we have made strategic advances in rolling out some of the critical technological systems to improve service delivery. 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. Without optimising the performance and capacity of this branch, we will not be able to drive many of our key projects.
As hon members will recall - and this is already in the public domain - the Who Am I online project, which is intended to integrate all our IT systems, was at our request investigated by the Auditor-General. Based on the Auditor-General's findings, a decision has been made to conduct a forensic audit. Once this process is completed, a report will be presented. However, 2010 preparations 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 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 in terms of the provisions of the Public Service Act, Act 30 of 2007, section 7A.
We can make bold to say that we are now well on the way to transforming the Government Printing Works into a modern and high-security state printer. We shall continue this year, to the tune of R367 million, to acquire even more state-of-the-art machinery to enhance our printing capacity and services, and place the Government Printing Works on a par with other printers in the same market.
The conversion to a government component will enable the Government Printing Works to recruit and retain skilled artisans the organisation requires to discharge its mandate. Once this process is completed, we will, during the course of the year, appoint the board, which has never existed, and complete the establishment of the new leadership and management structures. We have made major strides to fulfil the long-awaited relocation of the organisation to a new facility conducive to modern and high-security printing functions. We have identified and are working with the Department of Public Works to prepare this site for these purposes. Meanwhile, the passport factory has already moved to the new facility and shall soon be followed by the rest of the organisation.
Chairperson, as you will recall, the Film and Publications Amendment Bill was returned to the National Assembly by the President for certain further amendments, which were made. Once this has been assented to, its implementation will include, among other things, the application of the new governance structure, which will improve the board's efficiency. Furthermore, it will strengthen and widen the Film and Publication Board's scope to protect children from harmful material. We are pleased to report that the FPB has been accepted as a member of Inhope, the International Association of Internet Hotlines. This 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 the law-enforcement agencies, NGOs and the 2010 Local Organising Committee to ensure that there is a heightened focus on child protection against many paedophiles that will come into our country pretending to be soccer fans, to ensure that the 2010 World Cup is child friendly.
Chairperson, I would at this stage like to thank the hon Minister for her leadership during the past year. Sorry, during the past month. It seems like a year already! I would also like to thank the former Minister for her stewardship during what was a difficult period. I would like to thank the director-general and top officials of the department, the Government Printing Works, the Film and Publication Board and the IDC for their support. I would also like to thank the chairperson of the portfolio committee, as well as members of the portfolio committee for their support and cordial relations, and we look forward to a cordial but robust engagement in the year to come. I thank you. [Applause.]