Home Affairs and Basic Education sign joint agreement

By Nomava Nobumba
02 March 2010

Home Affairs department together with Basic Education department have jointly signed an Intergovernmental Protocol.

The agreement was signed yesterday at the offices of the department of Basic Education.

The Basic Education department says in a statement, the aim of the protocol is to strengthen the collaboration between the departments.

“The objectives and priorities of the protocol are to create a constructive working relationship and to foster a relationship of mutual cooperation, support and assistance with regard to the sharing of information and best practices in combating fraud in the process of registering of birth certificates,” says the department.

The department also believes the protocol will establish formal channels of information sharing and communication.

According to the department this protocol identifies specific areas of collaboration where both departments will cooperate for the betterment of government services to the people of the country.

The department’s Dr Granville Whittle says they will identify schools where there are a high number of learners without birth certificates in order for DHA to visit these schools to register births.

“The DHA will conduct an accelerated birth registration campaign in cooperation with schools in order to reach the target of registering all births by 2011,”said Dr Whittle.

Whittle says the final stage of the protocol will be the DHA providing DoBE with a list of identification numbers of learners turning six and seven years of age each year.

He says this will help the Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System (LURITS) to track whether all learners are in fact in school and will able to identify learners that are of school going age but never entered the school system.