BL Premium reports that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has embarked on a R2,4bn, three-year project to digitise more than 350-million documents, with about 90% of the funds to be used to employ 10,000 unemployed young graduates to undertake the work.
DHA Minister Aaron Motsoaledi announced the project on Thursday after having recently received confirmation from Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana that R500m would be available for the project in the 2022/23 financial year. President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the project in his state of the nation address in February. Digitisation will reduce delays experienced in applying for unabridged birth and marriage certificates and amendments and rectification of biographic details, which require departmental officials manually search for the original documents. Motsoaledi noted that the DHA has “more than 350-million civic paper records relating to birth, marriages, deaths and amendments”. The unemployed graduates should be qualified in IT and document, information and records management, with the qualifications having been obtained from institutions of higher learning. They will also receive training. Successful youth will be paid a stipend ranging from R5,000 for entry-level positions to R9,500 for technical-support level positions and R14,250 for manager-level positions. Motsoaledi promised the recruitment process would be fair and transparent, would include people with disabilities and be accessible to unemployed young graduates throughout the country. 60% of the intake will be women. The project will run from November 2022 until October 2025, with the first intake of 2,000 recruits starting work on 1 November. The adverts for this phase will be available from Friday. A total of 4,000 recruits will assume duty in January 2023 in the second phase and a further 4,000 will start work in April 2023.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Linda Ensor at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
- See too, Home Affairs digitisation: Graduate recruitment starts Friday – here’s how to apply, at The Citizen
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