Pretoria - Minister of Home Affairs, Naledi Pandor, will on 1 January 2013 lead the department's campaign for the registration of New Year's Day child births at the Bonteheuwel Maternity Clinic in Cape Town.
Pandor will be supported by Home Affairs Deputy Minister Fatima Chohan, who will also embark on the registration of new-born babies at the Charlotte Maxeke and Rahima Moosa hospitals in Parktown, Johannesburg and Carletonville, Gauteng respectively.
The effort to register child births comes within the context of the on-going National Population Registration Campaign launched by President Jacob Zuma to consolidate a secure, accurate and credible national population register, with a single point of entry at birth.
The National Population Registration Campaign is aimed at:
The registration of all child births within 30 days of delivery;
Mobilisation of youths of 15 years and above to apply for IDs;
And to end the practice of late registration of births.
The Department of Home Affairs has embarked on a massive effort to ensure connectivity of about 300 hospitals, clinics and health-care centres across the country to the Home Affairs systems to enable the registration of child births before parents leave the maternity centres.
In those health care facilities which are still to be connected to the department's systems, Home Affairs officials are deployed to regularly collect completed child registration forms for their entry into the National Population Register.
"A secure National Population Register, complimented by the national census, enables government to plan adequately based on the demographics of the population, their location and gender. This is done in order to allocate national resources accordingly and in line with our developmental plan," said the department in a statement. - SAnews.gov.za
