Schreiber believes Home Affairs on right track in latest bid to cancel fraudulent IDs

CAPE TOWN - Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said he believed that his department was on the right track in its latest attempt to cancel fraudulent identity documents. 
 
The department was taken to court last year over attempts to cancel hundreds of thousands of blocked IDs. 
 
Speaking to the media at Parliament this week, Schreiber said this time around, he believed the department was following due process and complying with the court order to notify people first. 
 
Last week, the department issued a public notice inviting those whose IDs had been blocked to write to the department if they believed the move was unjustified. 
 
"You need to inform people if you are going to take a step that’s going to impact their lives. So, we are very committed to doing that. We are launching social media campaigns to inform people, if you hold a blocked ID, please approach us, submit the reasons, we will look at those, so we can differentiate between bona fide cases of fraud and cases where people’s IDs have been wrongfully blocked."
 
Schreiber told Parliament this week that until human intervention was removed from the application process for national documents, fraud and corruption would persist. 
 
Those affected by blocked IDs have until 16 September to make representations to the department. 
 
"There’s no ill intention or a desire not to give people a fair hearing. But then we do need the public to come forward and use this 30-day window to make those submissions and we’ll take those very seriously because all we want, ultimately, is to fix the problem."