13 Jun 2018

The Minister of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs, Ms Dorcas Makgato has informed Parliament on Tuesday  that  her ministry has committed to increasing production of Omang from 1 500 per to 3 000 per day.

She said they have removed a number of administrative impediments such as requesting for persons as witnesses for proof of their birth, replacing xx with 01/01 and allowing headgear to be won for cultural and religious purposes when taking Omang pictures.

Minister Makgato said in terms of facilitating the clearance of the backlog of the expired Omang cards, and the applications, her ministry had already appointed and deployed additional 35 officers and 32 of which have started working at the district offices.

Ms Makgato said in addition 225 interns have been requested from the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development, and 69 of them have already been confirmed and the induction of the interns started on June 11 this week.

She said 100 cameras and 100 photo printers were already in place and distributed to District offices and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development was consulted to assist with P2.5 million funding for overtime. Additionally, Minister Makgato said  another funding has been secured for 150 computers, 105 laptops and 40 printers and procurement of these had already started.

Regarding vehicles, Ms Makgato said they had requested 44 vehicles from the Ministry of Transport and Communications and the request had been agreed to and only waiting for the delivery of the said vehicles.

A total of 198 679 Batswana have expired Omang Cards, despite the ministry’s commitment to have renewed all expired Omang cards by August 31 2018. MP for Nkange, Mr Edwin Batshu had asked the minister to assure the House that by September  3 this year when voter registration commenced all Omang Cards due for renewal this year would be renewed. 

He also wanted to know when obstacles encountered when renewing Omang would be eliminated to make renewal much easier and more customer friendly. ENDS