Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1698748276108.pdf (Namibia)
Republic of Namibia 2016/2017 BUDGET STATEMENT BY THE HONOURABLE PENDUKENI IIVULA-ITHANA, MP AND MINISTER OF HOME AFFAIRS AND IMMIGRATION VOTE 05 MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS AND IMMIGRATION 22 MARCH 2016 llPage Honourable Chairperson of the whole House Committee, Honourable Members, At the outset, I would like to join other colleagues who presented their budget statements before me in congratulating the Honourable Ministers of Finance and Economic Cooperation and National Planning Commission, their Deputies and the entire staff members of their respective so Ministries, for improving and diversifying revenue sources which is enabling our Government to tackle the diverse needs of our society During this Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration intends to take yet another bold step towards the realisation of a full coverage of national documents for all Namibians who qualify.
Its sub-sector sub-vision of Vision 2030 which is "All Namibians to have national documents, and there is a smooth and efficient regulative and controlling mechanism for refugees and immigrants into Namibia as well as their residence in the country".

Honourable Members, the programmes of the Ministry and all our efforts are geared towards the realization of our Strategic Plan, NDP IV and Vision 2030 as per the following: 1.

Civil Registration, 2.

Immigration Control and Citizenship, 3.


Refugee Administration 4.

Administration We have done critical evaluation of our work, reviewed our strategy per goals as outlined in vision 2030 to ensure that every qualified Namibian is in possession of identification document by the end of the 2017/2018 financial year.
Although some of the mandate of the Ministry is to confer citizenship, grant residence or employment permits to expatriates and give refugee status; these functions are guided by legislations and regulations to ensure that the work is done diligently and meticulously without compromising the security of the country.
21Page I am optimistic that all of us in this august House are fully aware with the transformation that took place at the ministry during the last two years with the introduction of the "Turnaround Project".
Today, I stand tall and proud to inform you that the dreams, aspirations and plans as spelled out in the work plans in partnership with Fever Tree Consulting; a South African based company that was contracted to assist the ministry in the transformation and improvement of its service delivery strategy, commonly known as "Turnaround Strategy" has been realized.

The ministry has made significant achievements that need to be sustained.
It is also vital to underline that sustainability requires resources both financial and a disciplined, determined human capital.

The Ministry has indeed been transformed.

The face of the Ministry has completely changed.

The officials have become efficient and effective in service oriented.

We have set a standard worth emulating.


Honourable Chairperson of the Whole House Committee, Honourable Members of this August House, Let me now take the opportunity to present the budget allocation of the MHAI for the 201612017 financial year and to outline individual programmes for which the funds will be utilized.

An amount of Four Hundred Ninety Seven Million, Two Hundred and Forty Three Thousand Namibia Dollars (NS 497,243000) is allocated for 2016/2017 Financial Year.
Out of this amount, Three Hundred Forty Eight Million, Six Hundred and Sixty One Thousand Namibia Dollars (N$ 348 661 000.00) is allocated for Operational budget while One Hundred Forty Eight Million, Five Hundred and Eighty Two Thousand Namibia Dollars (N$ 148 582 000.00) is for Capital projects of the Ministry.
Let me share with you the summary of achievements of the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration and introduce the requested allocations for each of the programmes under the Ministry's Vote: 31Page 1.

CIVIL REGISTRATION The core mandate of this Department is to manage the National Population Register.

This includes the registration and issuance of birth and Death certificates, Identity Document (ID) cards, and Marriage Certificates.
Activities under this Department are aimed to ensure that Government has the necessary demographic information that it needs for planning purposes.

The Department of Civil Registration maintains its rapid strides to digitalize all processes and records.
Last year, the Ministry together with the Office of the Prime Minister developed a new National Population Registration Front Office System (NPRFOS), which track and trace all the applications that are submitted to the ministry, therefore eliminating the probability of lost applications and tempering of applications by staff members.

The testing of this system has been finalized, and the piloting will commence in the first quarter of2016/2017 financial year.
The Ministry has been busy with the Automation Project, which aims to digitalize all historical birth, death and marriage records.

This project has reached its goal of automating all birth, death and ID records from 1970' s, and it will close up with marriage records by mid-2016.

All these records are scanned and uploaded on the National Population Registration System (NPRS).

The Ministry has rolled out the electronic printed birth and death certificates to the Southern, Eastern and Central regions.
Moreover, the Office of the Prime Minister is busy upgrading the National Population Registration System (NPRS) to print electronic-marriage certificate and electronic marriage licenses for Pastors.

During November 2015, the World Bank visited Namibia to conduct a feasibility study of the country's readiness to introduce Electronic Identity Cards (e-IDs), which is in line with the e-government policy.
A validation workshop was held in February 2016, and Stakeholders are still engaging on the privacy and data sharing concept, specifically on the type of data that should be shared between public and private institutions without compromising constitutional right to privacy.
41Page Furthermore, I wish to inform this august House that the Ministry has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to host the ID4Africa Conference in June 2017, of which the key objective is to create a platform for African Governments to benchmark and discuss matters related to digital identity and implementation of e-IDs.

It is equally important to inform this august House that the Ministry continues to expand ID registration services by purchasing more IMAGO machines which capture ID cards.
Currently, the Ministry has (20) ID registration Offices, of which Thirteen (13) are at regional offices and seven (7) at Sub-regional offices.

It is equally important to inform this August House and the public that the Ministry recently extended ID registration services to four (4) offices, namely Rehoboth, Okahandja, Grootfontein and Okahao as well as we prepared four (4) more offices to start with ID services in the new financial year, i.e.

Okongo, Omungwelume, Walvis Bay and Ruacana.


It is the desire of the Ministry to continue taking the services closer the people in far rural areas of the country, such as Uvudhiya, Engodi, Otjimbingwe, Epembe, Mpungu, Okamatapati, Okatjoruu, Rosh Pinah, Kapako, Luhonono, Ndiyona and Nkurenkuru.
Honourable Chairperson of the Whole House Committee, Honourable Members of this August House, It is worth to inform this august House and the public that the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration is planning to phase-out the old South West Africa (SWA) ID card by the 31 March 2017.

The purpose of phasing-out the SWA IDs is to adapt to the international best practices that encourages only one type of legal identity card to be used within a given national territory.
It is also noted that many SWA IDs contain wrong particulars; therefore this exercise will provide an opportunity for the affected people to rectify their particulars.

It is estimated that approximately 70 000 people are still in possession of SWA ID cards.

I request all those Namibian citizens and permanent residents who still use the old SWA IDs to apply for new Namibian IDs as soon as possible.
SIPage The Department continues to lead the implementation of the 5 year Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Strategy together with Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) and stakeholders are meeting regularly to report on the progress made.

For the implementation of the above mentioned programmes, I wish to request this august House to approve an amount of (One Hundred and Eighty Six Million, One Hundred and Thirty Six Thousand Namibia Dollars (N$ 186 136 000.00) only.

2.
2.

IMMIGRATION CONTROL AND CITIZENSHIP This programme is responsible for the facilitation of lawful migration, issuance of travel documents and processing of Namibian citizenship applications.

The programme is divided into two directorates, namely: 1.

Directorate of Immigration and Border Control and 2.
The Directorate of Visas, Permits, Passports and Citizenship 2.1 Directorate for Immigration and Border Control This Directorate is responsible for the efficient, effective and smooth movement of persons entering and exiting the country.
Other responsibilities of this directorate include surveillance of suspected illegal immigrants, the facilitation of deportations of illegal immigrants, the provision of secretariat services to the Immigration Tribunals and conducting joint operations with other law enforcement agencies.

As referred to in many of my previous speeches, Immigration officers are the first point of contact with visitors to Namibia.
It is therefore, common course that whatever impression they create is taken to portray the level of service delivery in the country.

During the 201512016 financial year 2 742 illegal immigrants were deported from the country.

I want to inform the Hon Members that the exercise of deportation is costly and now compounded by the strengthening of 61Page major currencies against the Namibia dollar.

Despite this, the Directorate remains committed to curb illegal migration.
The Border Control Management System (BCMS) regulates and controls the entry and exit of persons, as well as their residence in Namibia.

The BCMS is an integrated system which links with ports of entries and various Immigration Offices.

Due to high level of demand for system services, including its roll - out to other existing and new upcoming entry points, an upgrade is required not only to extend its life span but also to inject new IT technologies which will ensure efficient and effective management.
In this regard, a contract with a service provider was signed.

However, as I informed Parliament in my Ministerial statement of 16 February 2016, the upgrade could not be carried out due to lack of funds.

2.2 The Directorate of Visas, Permits, Passports and Citizenship This Directorate is responsible for the processing of various types of applications of visas, permits, passports and citizenship.
The Directorate provides secretarial services to the Immigration Selection Board (ISB) and its Sub-Committees which deal with the consideration of visas and permits, as well as the Namibian Citizenship Committee which deals with applications for various categories of Namibian citizenship.

I would like to inform this august House that the Aliens Control System (ACS) project to automate visas and permits could not be sufficiently implemented in this financial period due to lack of funds.
The purpose of the ACS is to facilitate the capturing and processing of applications for visas, permits and issuance of electronic visa stickers for the replacement of rubber stamps.

The introduction of secure bio-metric stickers is to eliminate or alternatively curb forgeries of visas and permits.

This system has been successfully connected to two of our Diplomatic missions, namely: Beijing in China and Pretoria in South Africa.
It is worth mentioning that progress has been maintained with regard to the waiting period for visas from 10 working days to 3- 5 working days while employment permits continued being maintained at 30 calendar days and permanent residence permit (PRP) at six (6) months.
During the year under review, the Ministry issued 6 463 employment permit while 71Page 1 390 were rejected, 197 temporary residence permits were issued and 22 rejected, 342 permanent residence permits were issued while 221 were rejected and 4 694 student's permits were issued while 279 were rejected.

A total number of 43 754 visas were issued, while 3 102 were rejected.
The Ministry has achieved yet another milestone with the introduction of automation of Citizenship system and records have been uploaded onto the system with effect from 01 February 2016.This system will continue to capture historical records which will help the ministry to give feedback to the progress made on various types of Namibian Citizenship applications.
However, the waiting period for applications for Citizenship by Descent has an average of 30 - 60 days while other categories (Naturalization and Marriage) can take up to an average of four months.

During the year under review the Ministry granted 944 Namibian Citizenship by Descent, 108 by Marriage, 247 by Naturalization and 394 by Registration.
Progress has been made with regard to the Electronic Passport (e-passport) project where the service providers and the ministry signed the contract and what remains is only the testing of the chip which is one of the major security features.

It is on this basis that the ministry must secure funds to pay the service providers before they embark upon with the mass production of e-passport booklets.
During the year under review, the ministry issued 72 9410rdinary passports and 302 were rejected, 403 diplomatic passports were issued while 1 was rejected, 555 Official passports were issued while 13 were rejected and 65 travel documents ( brown passports) were issued and 2 were rejected.

I now wish to request this august House to approve an amount of One Hundred and Fifty Seven Million, Two Hundred and Ten Thousand Namibia Dollars (N$ 157210000.00) for this programme.

81Page 3.
81Page 3.

REFUGEE ADMINISTRATION Honourable Chairperson of the Whole House Committee, Honourable Members of this August House, This programme provides protection and support to refugees and asylum seekers In Namibia.

It further coordinates and facilitates the voluntary repatriation exercises of refugees to their countries of origin and receives Namibian returnees mainly from Dukwi Refugee Settlement in Botswana.

The programme also facilitates study and work permits for refugees.
Currently, Namibia hosts 4 761 refugees and asylum seekers at Osire Refugee Settlement with the majority from the Great Lake Regions.

During the period under review 574 refugee and asylum seekers were voluntarily repatriated to their country of origin.

Equally, 21 Namibian returnees from Dukwi were repatriated and re-integrated into their communities which bring the number of the remaining refugees in Dukwi to 923.
It is also worth to remind Honorable Members of this House that some of the Namibian refugees at Dukwe Refugee Camp in Botswana, had filed an urgent application on December 31 last year to seek restraining order to stop the Botswana government from implementing the cessation clause which was agreed upon by the Tripartite Commission, comprising of Botswana, Namibia and UNHCR.

This case is still with the court.


The Directorates of Refugee Administration, Visas, Permits, Passports and Citizenships and IT in consultation with UNHCR Pretoria is in the process to acquire machine readable to travel documents for refugees to comply with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) specification.

I now wish to request this august House to approve an amount of Four Million, Six Hundred and Twenty Nine Thousand Namibia Dollars (N$ 4 629 000.00) for this programme.

91Page 4.
91Page 4.

ADMINISTRATION The purpose of this program is to provide administrative support services in terms of personnel, finance, legal services, logistics, internal auditing, training, information technology and the coordination of capital projects to ensure efficient and effective service delivery.

Administration is the core to the change management process driving the institution to greater levels of innovation, efficiency and accountability.
I am proud to confirm that progress has been made towards capital projects during the year under review; which include the site hand-over of the Head Office Building in Windhoek, Khomas region, Kunene Regional Office in Opuwo, Kunene region and Dobe Border Post in Otjozundjupa region for construction.

The bigger share of the allocation will cater for feasibility studies and documentations for the projects that will be under taken in the next financial year, personnel expenditure and payment of other bills.
The ministry is in the process of introducing credit limit management system to cut cost at least by half, on telephone expenditure.

Moreover, the programme of Administration is responsible to review and maintain the Turnaround Initiatives.

I now wish to request this august House to approve an amount of One Hundred Forty Nine Million, Two Hundred and Sixty Eight Thousand Namibia Dollars (NS 149268000.00) for this programme.
Similarly, I am thrilled to inform this august House that during the last financial year, the Ministry has generated an amount of Sixty Three Million, Sixty Eight Thousand, Five Hundred and Sixty Three Namibia Dollars (N$ 63 068 563.00) from administration fees of permits, visas, passports and miscellaneous excluding revenues from Foreign Missions.

So, the ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration does not only ask for funds from the treasury but also generate funds for government too.
In the same vein I would like to inform this august House that during the year under review, some of the activities for the ministry could not be adequately covered due to budgetary 10 I P age limitations.

The affected programmes are: the Border Management System (BMS), the introduction of Visa stickers for Alien Control system, the e-passport project and the regular mobile registration for national documents.

In conclusion, I would like to thank my team, the Hon.
Deputy Minister, the Permanent Secretary, Management and the entire staff members for their hard work in implementing the programmes.

I further extend credits to our clients for supporting our new Turnaround initiatives during the transition phase.

I now move that an amount of Four Hundred and Ninety Seven Million, Two Hundred and Forty Three Thousand Namibia Dollars (NS 497 243 000.00) be allocated to Vote 05 of the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration.
May your usual support prevail and; I thank you!

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