03 Mar 2020

Minister of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs, Ms Anna Mokgethi, has requested Parliament to approve proposals of over P477 million and P101 million for recurrent and development budgets respectively.

The 2020/21 recurrent budget of over P477 million would represent an increase of 23.5 per cent, translating to P90.8 million from the 2020/2019 budget provisions.

Ms Mokgethi attributed this to increment in government employees’ salaries and overtime allowances for officers working at ports of entry.

She said unlike in the past, overtime allowances were not included in the budget.

Minister Mokgethi proposed an allocation of P69.6 million to the ministry headquarters, saying it would cater for the adjustments of employees’ salaries. She said the budget under headquarters saw an increase of P1.6 million from the 2019/2020 budget provisions.

She also requested P263 million to be approved for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to cater for procurement of passport and photographic materials because most passports were due to expire in the coming financial year.

Furthermore, Ms Mokgethi requested an allocation of P56 million for the Department of Gender Affairs to cater for salary adjustments as well as overtime allowances.

The Department of Civil and National Registration needed an approval of P88 million for provision of maintenance of the National Identification System (NIS), Automated Finger Print

Identification System (AFIS) as well as the Births and Deaths Registration System (BDRS). The development budget, Ms Mokgethi said, represented a decline of P15.6 million, translating to 13.4 per cent of the 2019/2020 budget provisions.

She further requested an amount of P89.3 million for ministry’s computerisation, noting that P84.6 would be used for development of the ministry’s integrated system.

She added that P4 million would be for computerisation of border posts and installation of public key directory, whilst the remaining P750 000 would be used for procurement of computers for new staff in the ministry.

In addition, Ms Mokgethi said her ministry required P350 000 to conduct feasibility study on establishment and strengthening of safe havens. She also requested approval of P12 million for refurbishment of the ministry headquarters.

Ms Mokgethi requested Parliament to approve her ministry’s budget, saying her ministry directly subscribed to the Sustainable Development Goal 5 of achieving gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls.

She also said her ministry was responsible for safeguarding national identity and facilitating movement of people across borders, amongst other things.

She further indicated that with continuous efforts to monitor systems, processes and procedures to determine areas that could be nipped to improve service delivery and create conducive environment for business to flourish, government introduced Visa reforms.

She said reforms included among others adjusting and abolishing Visa fees in certain categories, introduction of Visa on arrival and payments in convertible foreign currencies.

In addition, she said the ministry had introduced single and multiple entry Visas and automatically issues Residence Permits for people who have been issued with Work Permits.

Ms Mokgethi said those measures have had a positive effect on turnaround times and had contributed immensely to the ease of doing business in the country. ENDS