Pretoria - Nine Cuban nationals have begun sharing their knowledge on immigration issues with a group of 30 South African trainers.
Briefing the media on the initiative on Friday, Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said the Cubans would be providing training on aspects of immigration issues.
She stressed that the 30 local trainers, who were from the private sector as well as government, were all professional trainers.
"They will be working with the Cubans. They will undergo training from the Cubans on specific immigration issues and then together they will train the recruits from the Defence Force," she said.
The department has recruited 350 officials from the Department of Defence who will be laterally transferred to Home Affairs.
As part of a pilot project they will receive training and then replace Home Affairs officials at the OR Tambo Airport. The outgoing officials will be reskilled, the minister explained.
The main reasons for the training programme were to properly orientate the department and to address gaps in the training that immigration officers received, Dlamini Zuma added.
"For a long time now it (the department) was just seen as a service delivery department, yet it is a security department and in some ways is the backbone of our security," she said.
Dlamini Zuma said the aim was to orientate the department so that it was seen as a security department with a service component.
With regards to the training, Dlamini Zuma said the department decided to partner with the Cubans because they had a good programme that South Africa could benefit from.
"We have confidence in them. We worked with them...even before democracy," she said.
While the South African trainers have already begun their training, the training programme for the 350 recruits is expected to start later this month and will run until December.
