South Africa's Department of Home Affairs is working on rolling out an online Identity Document (ID) verification system that is expected to cut down on document fraud in the country.
The project will give the South African Social Security Agency, banks, insurers and retailers, among others, real-time access to the Home Affairs National Identification System (Hanis) in order to verify the identities of current and prospective clients.
Hanis stores South African citizens' ID numbers, fingerprints and photos. Accessing Hanis will enable these sectors to conduct on-the-spot verification of the fingerprints of clients against the information stored in Hanis.
"This will make it difficult for people who have fraudulent IDs to use them," Home Affairs Director-General Mkuseli Apleni told a media briefing in Pretoria on Tuesday. According to Apleni, the system will be up and running by the end of this year.
The department signed a memorandum of understanding with the South African Banking Risk Information Centre in this regard in March. This comes in light of the escalating ID fraud. On Monday, the police arrested three men in connection with 588 fraudulent IDs found hidden in a roof of a house in Eldorado Extension 9 in Johannesburg.
One of the suspects told police that he bought the ID’s from an official at the Department of Home Affairs in Roodepoort. The police suspect that the man was selling false ID books to people who crossed the South African border illegally.
Welcoming the arrest, Apleni warned officials who were teaming up with criminals that they would face the full might of the law. The department would also conduct its own investigation to find out how the IDs fell into the hands of the suspects.
"The arrests once more underline our conviction that working together with our law enforcement agencies, we can make serious inroads in our fight against crime and corruption," Apleni said.
Sourced by SA – The Good News via BuaNews
