Home Affairs Dept urges green ID book holders to switch to smart IDs

JOHANNESBURG - The Home Affairs Department is urging green identity document (ID) bookholders to switch to smart IDs to avoid falling victim to identity theft.

This is part of the department's efforts to resolve the decades-old issue of wrongfully blocked IDs and reducing the circulation of fraudulent IDs.

Last week, the department called on South Africans with blocked IDs to provide written reasons within 30 days for why their ID should not be cancelled.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber: "We've gazetted an opportunity for South Africans who hold blocked IDs to approach the Department of Home Affairs, indicate that your ID has been blocked wrongfully, we will do verification of the information and if it is found that that ID was wrongfully blocked, then it will be released."

Schreiber said some blocked IDs were a result of fraud.

"But at the same time, a number of those blocked IDs are actually the product of the fraud you are talking about. So that is why we can't just ignore that because it does pose a security risk to the country. Please come forward if you are one of the people with a blocked ID so that we can differentiate between people whose IDs should be unblocked and those who are genuine security risks and that's why we're saying those ones will be cancelled going forward."