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Madam Speaker:

It gives me great pleasure to present the Budget of the Department of Home Affairs for the financial year 2000/2001.

It is appropriate that I pay tribute to my Deputy, Dr Lindiwe Sisulu, who has held office with me for a second term. She has been a pillar of strength in assisting me with the running of this often-demanding portfolio. Mr. Billy L. Masetlha has been re-deployed by the President from the South African Secret Service to assume the position of my Director-General with effect from December 1, 1999, officially starting with the Department on December 8. He has already made his presence felt in the running of the Department of Home Affairs, I wish to welcome him also from this forum.

The two main line functions within the ambit of the activities of the Department of Home Affairs are Migration and Civic Services. The Chief Directorate of Migration is responsible for control over the admission of aliens to their residence in and their departure from the Republic, while the Chief Directorate of Civic Services' responsibilities comprise mainly population registration, citizenship and all matters pertaining to the issuing of travel documents.

When I presented my Department's Budget last year I outlined the challenges confronting it. Looking back at that address, we can take pride that the Department successfully conquered some of such past challenges. This gives me the confidence that we will be equally successful in dealing with the present and future challenges, which may offer opportunities to increase the quality of government in South Africa and in delivery of our services to the citizenry.

Last year the Department was confronted with a seemingly insurmountable challenge of providing bar-coded I.Ds to all eligible voters who needed one for election. Many prophets of doom forecast the impossibility of accomplishing this task, and this allegation became the object of two court actions and a raging public controversy. In the end, on the day after the elections not a single eligible voter complained that they were disenfranchised because of a failure by the Department of Home Affairs to provide the required documentation. I feel that it is my duty to pay once again high tribute to the hard work and dedication of our public servants, in spite of the often inefficient, and at times disastrous, logistical conditions.

In confronting tomorrow's challenges we must count on the same dedication of service, which is increasingly becoming the culture of our Department. As the Minister, I often receive reports about the insufficient service output of our offices, queues, delays and administrative malfunctions, which undoubtedly exist. However, given the size of our pool of human resources, I have received relatively few complaints about discourtesy, inefficiency or lack of dedication of our public service. My administration will continue to stress a culture of public service and dedication. The training of our human resources will remain one of my major priorities.

I must note the insufficiency of the budgetary allocations. The needs of migration control and civic affairs did not input sufficiently in the overall processes of governmental priority determination. Since 1994, in real terms there has been a decline in the resource allocated to our Department. One can only spend so much less, work so much smarter and achieve so much more within the confines of what one has and still fulfil one's obligations. Thereafter, spiralling demands are destined to render systems and practices dysfunctional. The Department of Home Affairs has reached that critical threshold.

The insufficient funding in every sphere of activity of my Department is hampering the production of desired outputs. Moreover, projecting required future outputs against key indicators such a population and migratory trends, suggests a continued widening of this gap, inevitably followed by the incapacity to confront the resultant unmanageable imbalance. Against this existing significant disparity between actual departmental financial needs and allocated funds, for the 2000/2001 financial year allocation has increased by a mere 0.85%.

This lack of funds impacts severely on the staffing, and consequently, the level of service delivery. The results of the moratorium on the filling of vacant posts, reluctantly introduced due to budgetary constraints and annually rising overspending, are daunting. Similarly, the moratorium on employer driven terminations has impaired our capacity to manoeuvre increasing inefficiency. During the current year the overspending on personnel came to a staggering R24, 62 million. This amount is made up of:

Superfluous personnel (136): R10,6 million
Posts additional to the establishment (51): R5,2 million
Shortfall on running costs of Foreign Officers: R7,0 million
Refunds in terms of Judge White Commission ruling: R1,82 million

The Department had requested a substantially higher budgetary allocation merely to maintain the operation of our two line functions and the services ancillary to them up to par with present standards. If we were to upgrade substantially our quality of services, we would need even greater budgetary allocations. The Department's present financial crisis is also the product of requests for adequate budgetary allocations having been declined for several years, compounding over the years our need for additional resources and capacity.

Consequently, many of our official work in offices, which are grossly inadequate, lacking basic supplies and infrastructure, such as computers. Moreover, our distribution of offices across the national territory is grossly inadequate to meet the needs and demands of our service recipients. Therefore, we must accept the conclusion that within the present framework characterised by financial limitations, constraints and inadequate resources, the Department would not be able to meet the challenge of providing the quality of services, which our people rightly deserve and expect.

We have therefore begun a process of lateral thinking to see to what extent the present imbalances can be corrected through a paradigm change. In the short term, future joint ventures with local government structures are in the process of being established. This partnership may apply in respect of Civic Services as local government has a primary interest in interfacing with the population register and could assist in the registrations and data upkeep in respect of births, marriages and deaths. Over time, local government could be involved in the issuance of identity cards and other civic affairs functions, as happens in many countries around the world.

Looking at the long term, my Ministry has pursued ways and means to restructure our Department so that we can do more and better with increasingly less. The line functions of Civic Affairs and Migration Control present distinct and somehow different challenges. After the three-year long process of policy formulation, on February 5, the Department published a draft Migration Bill for comments. This Bill will restructure our Migration function, addressing many of the problems and difficulties we have encountered within the present legislative and administrative framework. The significance of this Bill is that it intends not only to bring about legislative reform but also to restructure the administrative machinery, which is tasked to carry out the responsibility of Migration.

Our country can take pride in having been the first to develop a new migration system in the 21st century and for the 21st century. In fact, across the world migration systems have not been the object of dedicated and all-comprehensive policy attention. Many existing migration systems have developed through incremental steps and adjustments out of the original moulds cast in the 19th century or the earlier part of the 20th century, and in the opinion of those who administer them, will need to be overhauled to meet the needs, challenges and aspirations of a rapidly globalising society, with intense social and cultural exchanges as well as the phenomena of organised crime.

In the interim, pending the restructuring and transformation of our migration function, the Ministry has taken several initiatives to bridge-gap solutions aimed at addressing present difficulties. I have given repeated instructions that a hot line be maintained with Investment South Africa to ensure that applications for temporary and permanent residence permits associated with foreign investment may expedited and if needed, facilitated. The Ministry itself has dealt with a large number of individual cases and submissions of all types, and in the past twelve months alone, I have taken action in respect of over twelve hundred submissions and applications.

Much has been written in the media about my Department's backlog in dealing with applications for permanent and temporary residence permits. I directed a number of processes aimed at alleviating this backlog. Countrywide, I have empowered officials of the rank of Deputy Director and higher to exempt from having an immigration permit, first permanent residence applicants who could clearly qualify in terms of completeness of their application form, compliance with our policy and the provisions of the Act, as well as first applications who, at the time of their application, had been married to a South African citizen or permanent resident for two years or longer and whose applications were duly completed. This process was made applicable to all applications in the offices of the Department at the time, as well as those received up to 31 January 2000.

Furthermore, I requested that all applications for temporary residence permits that were evidently complete, acceptable and qualified in all respects as required by legislation and regulations, received up to and including January 31, 2000, be fast-tracked to finalisation. The fast tracking was delegated to a wider group of officials than is normally the case. Moreover, I directed that in the case of temporary residence permits, where recommendations from bodies outside the Department are required, such applications be accompanied by such recommendation when presented to our Department. Lastly, officials with experience in migration work were seconded on a temporary basis from regional and district offices to the Department's temporary residence sub-directorate at Head Office, to assist with working off the backlog that existed at the time. These measures proved to have the desired effect and the backlog of permanent and temporary residence applications have since been substantially diminished.

Many of the difficulties in processing applications for permanent temporary residence permits are the product of the inadequate legislation under which we are operating and which we are in the process of completely reforming. In order to supplement legislative deficiencies, in the past year the Department has operated on the basis of policy directives contained in the Consular Code. However, the lack of public access to such policy directives compounded problems. For this reason, following the adoption of the Open Democracy Act, I gave instructions that the Consular Code be made available to the public, which will facilitate the interaction between the public and our structures. The efficiency of the Department has also been impaired by not having a Director-General for five months. The Chief Director of Migration, Dr Patrick Matlou, has been transferred out of the Department by Cabinet decision. In order to obviate the vacuum opened by his departure, on April 19 I gave instruction that Mr Ivan Lambinon, the Department's Deputy Director-General be moved back to the Department with immediate effect. Mr Lambinon was serving as the Head of the Government Printing Office while having a wealth of experience and knowledge in migration. I trust that his positive contribution towards the solution of the migration problems has already been felt.

On December 2, 1999 the Constitutional Court ruled that foreigners involved in lifelong permanent relationship with same-sex South Africans partners, should, when applying for immigration permits, be treated on the same footing as heterosexual couples. Convincing arguments have been put forward that heterosexual life partners cannot also be discriminated against and treated differently from spouses because of their marital status. Accordingly I have issued regulations to provide that the benefits extended to spouses of South African citizens also be made to life partners with certain qualifications and controls.

Presently the Department runs nineteen Foreign Offices. In locations where the Department has no representation the function is performed on an agency basis by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Consequently our services are provided at 185 locations abroad. During 1999, 507 248 visas were issued both abroad and in South Africa. From April 1 visas can only be obtained from our foreign mission, to obviate the possibility of fraud.

The Department is running its foreign operations on a shoestring budget, and the shortfall on this item for the current financial year amounts to R7 million. It will not be possible to upgrade services at current offices, or to establish a presence at newly identified priority locations to deal with an annual increase of 1 million visitors. Serious disfunctionalities pertaining to operational facilities and systems exist, especially at high volume offices such as in London, where 400 000 South Africans requiring civic services reside, and 500 000 Britons visiting South Africa per annum are in need of consular service. Moreover, following the Cabinet decision that our visa policy should be based on the principle of reciprocity, the resultant adding of the nationals of 22 countries non-exempted visitor category has far reaching implications for our international capacity requirements. The total number of visitors from those countries having been 958 488 during 1998, a preliminary costing has shown that an additional yearly R20 million will be required on top of the current R7 million deficit on the Department's foreign budget.

The electronic infrastructure with regard to information dissemination and application lodging would substantially alleviate costs with regard to exorbitantly high expenditure on personnel and facilities abroad. However, the incapacity to incur the initially sizeable installation inputs has impeded the Department from even fully exploring this option. Despite this, an electronic visa processing system has already been implemented at 26 South African missions abroad and a further 20 missions are scheduled to be online by the end of the month. This project will continue for two more years after which all visa application centres will be electronically linked to our Head Office. The utilisation of the Internet for the transfer of visa data was piloted at the Maputo Mission during the last year. Once security requirements have been ironed out, this cost-effective procedure will be rolled out to other offices. Apart from enhancing service delivery, the major advantages of this system relate to substantially limiting opportunities for fraud with regard to visa applications.

In the past years the major focus of the Department has been placed on processing permanent and temporary residence applications, and migration control was sought to be achieved mainly in this fashion. The main focus of our law enforcement has been placed on ensuring that aliens have respected their conditions of stay and could be apprehended, dealt with and when necessary deported if they breached them. Such an approach placed emphasis on those who had become part of the system. However, there is empirical evidence that large numbers of illegal aliens never become part of the system, nor apply for any permit. Therefore, the migration service envisaged in our draft legislation will focus greater emphasis on the enforcement in respect of people who are not within the system. The draft Immigration Bill facilitates aliens to become part of the system and be registered as such which will increase our capacity for enforcing and applying our laws in respect of them. It also simplifies our procedures, reducing the capacity required to administer them, so that our migration line function may be able to move capacity, resources and personnel into property structured activities of control at community level.

In October 1997 the Cabinet took the decision that only certain airports would retain their international status as ports of entry. The ten airports identified for this purpose were, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Upington, Nelspruit, Gateway (Pietersburg), Lanseria and Mafikeng (Mmabatho). These airports would be finally designated as ports of entry on compliance with set criteria pertaining to safety and security. Furthermore, Rand Airport would operate as an international only within the purview of international agreements that South Africa may have with other countries. During 1998, immigration services were withdrawn from a further five airports which were previously international airports, namely Alexander Bay, Grand Central, Rand Airport, Springbok and Wonderboom. Currently, only the representations for international status filed by the owners of Richards Bay Airport are still under consideration. The Cabinet further approved in 1999 that immigration services be transferred from Mmabatho Airport to Pilanesburg Airport. This decision has not yet been implemented due to structural changes that need to be made to the airport facilities by the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) to accommodate Government departments.

The magnitude of the surge in international travel to and from South Africa is indicated in the fact that a total of about 7 million visitors arrived in South Africa during 1999. This constitutes a 27, 71% increase since 1995 and this number is expected to grow at around 9% per annum for the foreseeable future. The advantages for the country of this tendency are commonplace, for tourism is becoming a major industry and job creator. Some visit of course for investment and other business purposes. Consequently, the official formalities pertaining to entry and exit should be as efficient and pleasant as possible. The new vision of migration control will try to achieve this goal.

We also need to have a new vision if we are to address the problems arising out of the administration of our Civic Affairs. The main problems of this line function relate to the inadequacy of our structures to respond to the demands of our service recipients and the unequal distribution of our service outlets. We do not have enough offices to meet demand and the distribution of our offices still reflects the special inequalities inherited from apartheid. Consequently, there are less offices where there are more people to serve, often with the most intense need for Civic Affairs documentation, such as I.Ds. There are no simple solutions to this issue. Some commentators have suggested that we should close some of our offices located in affluent segments of our territory and move them to rural areas. This approach is self-defeating because we must continue to serve the commercial hearts of our country. Furthermore, transferring an office from an urban to a rural area, or from any one given place to another, is often more costly than opening a new office.

The limiting factor remains unavailable financial resources to either transfer offices or open new ones. Therefore, if we wish to solve the problem confronting us we need to seek new approaches. In June last year I submitted to Cabinet a document putting forward the idea that consideration be given to delegating the delivery aspects of Civic Affairs to municipalities. Municipalities will be more equally distributed throughout our territory and their distribution is more closely related to population density. Municipalities have a direct interest in keeping track of live records, such as births, deaths and marriages. They will be equally qualified to enter such information in a centralised system and to issue births, death and marriage certificates along with identity documents. The central level of Government could maintain the mainframe and carry the responsibility of providing additional administrative capacity and training to municipalities where and when required. In smaller municipalities this function could be coupled with other central Government's functions equally delegated to them, along the lines of the often-voiced notion of a one-stop service delivery point. Implementation of this vision will be facilitated by the development of the Home Affairs National Identification System (HANIS), which will create the backbone for identification, providing secure protocols and built-in procedures to verify the accuracy of information and integrity of records.

The HANIS has been launched this year. The project, consisting of the automation of the Department's manual fingerprint system and the issuing of a new identity card, was prodded by a continuing situation of mistrust. The present identity document has limited security features and is easily forged, resulting in persons fraudulently obtaining benefits, with negative impacts on key services delivery such as housing subsidies, health services and welfare grants. It was resolved that an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) would be implemented to replace the manual identification and verification system. For this purpose, the Government did not have the necessary technology and a need arose for external procurement. A comprehensive tender was published on 6 December 1996 for a HANIS. After protracted tender process, which endured scepticism and attacks from various quarters, the tender was eventually awarded to the MARPLESS Telecommunications Technologies consortium. On November 8, 1999 the Department and contractor signed a detailed supply contract, drafted by the two parties.

Whereas it was initially intended to issue a two dimensional bar-coded identity card for the exclusive use of Home Affairs, it later surfaced that a multi-application card that would serve purposes other than just identification and verification, would be a wiser option. But then the tender won by MARPLESS had not addressed this need. Consequently, the Department is preparing a new tender for the procurement of the smart card technology. Concurrently, the Department is preparing the site to house HANIS for occupation from August this year. It is hoped that the first HANIS smart card will be issued during the last quarter of the year 2001.

The smart card that we are introducing is not confined to the limited identification and verification realms of the Home Affairs strategic engagement only. Rather, it is a multi-application, Government smart identity card with extensive capabilities contained in a chip that boasts enough intelligence to allow other departments, and perhaps even other forms of industry, permission to utilise the card technology. The HANIS card will serve several government departments and among others, the following are operating with Home Affairs on the project, namely Welfare, Health, Labour, Transport, Housing and Communications.

I have instructed my Department that as soon as the new cards are available an adequate communication strategy be implemented to explain their advantages. However, I do not wish to force our people to substitute their current bar-coded documents with the new cards and have instructed the Department that the introduction of the new cards be phased in, on the basis of the needs of our population and in response to their request. The new cards will be smart cards insofar as they will not be dissimilar to the cards Members of Parliament utilise to access our offices in the parliamentary precincts and those, which are employed for building access control. However, their security features will be greatly enhanced on the basis of state of the art technology.

I have requested my Department to investigate world wide technology in this regard to ensure that the investment we are making in this project not only purchases to our country the best available technology, but also enables us to develop an improved product which we may in turn be in a position to offer to other countries which in the future may wish to transform the national identification system by basing it on smart cards. For this reason, I instructed our Director-General and senior officials to visit several foreign countries, including Malaysia, Australia and Finland to familiarise themselves with the systems employed there, and possibly produce for our country something not only equally efficient and effective, but possibly with more advanced features which are the features those countries would adopt if they were to develop their systems today. For instance, I requested the Department to investigate the possibly of tying the smart card to our electronic finger-printing system so that the identity of the bearer or the card can be directly determined by an access control device or other equipment without the need for a machine operator having to compare the face of the holder with the picture of the card. This obviously will facilitate functions across the board, including the payment of pensions.

However, the new vision we hold may be crashed by present budgetary constrains. Despite the dramatic increase in foreign visitors, the personnel situation with regard to immigration officers has reached critical proportions. Due to the existing moratorium on the filling of vacant posts, the Department had to resort to crisis arrangements at key ports of entry where service delivery was on the verge of collapsing. This includes already overburdened staff having to work overtime, as well as the employment of casual workers. Both have significant disadvantages. In relation to overtime, long hours impact negatively on alertness and customer care and the option of giving officers time off for overtime worked, cannot be followed due to financial constraints. The practice has also contributed to high levels of absenteeism due to fatigue. Some major ports of entry are practically dependent of casual workers for continued operation such as Johannesburg International Airport (68,57%), Cape Town International Airport (44,47%) and Lebombo Border Post (89,47%). In case of Cape Town, the Airports Company (ACSA) has even for some time funded the appointment of additional casual employees, just to ensure acceptable passenger flow. Of course, the utilisation of temporary staff poses inherent problems such as training standards, motivation and reliability. To alleviate these problems on April 1, I decided to employ casual staff contingent on a full-time basis, which means an ad hoc measure forced upon us, rather than the result of a personnel needs assessment.

The consequence of these personnel shortfalls, as well as the incapacity to equip ports of entry with adequate facilities, has limited the Department's contribution to important Southern African regional development initiatives, such as the Trans-Kalahari Highway, where traffic at the Kopfontein Border Post has increased by 113,03% since 1995, and the Maputo Corridor Project, where traffic at the Lebombo Border Post has increased by 131, 31% during the same period.

During the past 6 years the Department was undaunted by the enormous task that faced it in respect of the influx of illegal aliens into the country, despite the fact that it was severely hampered by a lack of resources. In this period the number of illegal aliens removed annually increased from approximately 70 000 to more than 180 000 illegal aliens, in many cases with syndicate connections and sufficient resources, utilise legal process to remain in the country in contravention of the Aliens Control Act. The previous financial year budgetary allocation was not sufficient to defray legal costs. In the current financial year the entire amount allocated was spent in the first three months. Legal costs and the administrative demands of litigation, are bound to increase as we transform our functions in compliance with the Constitution and human rights-based culture. In the long term, a solution to this problem will be found in the new Immigration Courts and specialised immigration officials interfacing with them and applying simpler and more objective laws and regulations.

A great challenge that lies ahead of my Department in this field in the year 2000 is the finalisation of the process which commenced with the drafting of the Green Paper on International Migration in 1998, followed by the White Paper in February 1999 that led to the publishing of a draft Immigration Bill on February 12 last public comment. Throughout, we have endeavoured to keep this process open to public scrutiny and participation. Both the Green and White Papers were published for public comment. Provincial public hearings were held in all provinces for comment on the Green Paper.

The 80-day period provided for public comment on the draft Immigration Bill will be followed by a conference bringing together role players and stakeholders. The finalised Bill resulting from this process will be submitted to Cabinet as soon as possible, to be considered by the National Assembly. I anticipate tabling this Bill in Parliament by the end of August. In the meantime the Aliens Control Act, 1991, is still in force and certain amendments to this Act may be required. We will need to expand the definition of passport, simplify the visa requirement procedure in respect of aliens entering the country, and the issuance of immigration permits to dependants and to regulate the extension of permits and the removal of certain persons from the RSA. A Draft Aliens Control Amendment Bill is currently being drafted for my consideration before being submitted to the parliamentary process. The regulations to the Refugee Act, 1998, were drafted during 1999 and submitted to stakeholders for comment in November 1999. The Act, which has far-reaching implications for the handling of refugees in South Africa, came into effect on 1 April 2000. In accordance with section 8 of the Act, five Refugee Reception Centres, namely Braamfontein, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Pretoria, have been designated. This will bring to an end the system of lodging claims for asylum at any Home Affairs office, which created enormous problems, as there was no systematic and co-ordinated control of claimants.

Status Determination Officers were transferred from my Department's Head Office to these offices in March 2000 to effect the smooth implementation of this Act. The Cabinet will be approached regarding the financial requirements for implementing the envisaged staffing structure. Whereas the costs hereof for the ensuing financial year have been estimated at R15 106 000, only R5 175 000 has been allocated.

The Department, in collaboration with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and other role-players, is currently in the process of preparing for the Local Government Elections that will take place during November 2000. The Department will again do everything in its power to ensure that the demand for bar-coded identity documents is met. Amendments to the identification Act, 1997, will be made during the present parliamentary session to make provision for the abolition of all forms of identity documents except the bar-coded identity document.

In June 1999 national and provincial elections were successfully delivered by the Electoral Commission and made it possible for honourable members of this House to be here today. The Electoral Commission, the Chief Electoral Officer, their staff and all those men and women who contributed to the success of the elections deserve credit for their dedication and commitment to the developing democracy in our country.

In planning the preparation for local government elections, the Commission is working in close co-operation with government departments and role-players involved. It also has to closely follow and support the demarcation and the delimitation of wards for new municipalities. Once the delimitation process has been concluded the Commission will have to ensure that voters who are already on the voters' roll, as well as those who will still be applying for registration, are placed in the correct segments of the voters' roll.

The new municipal order introduces a more complicated electoral system than the one that pertained in last year's national and provincial elections. This calls for a timely and intensive voter education effort. The resources of the Commission will once again have to be supported by non-governmental community based organisations; the printed media, national broadcasting and community radio stations, as well as traditional structures in rural areas. Political parties have a special responsibility to provide voter education.

The Electoral Act, 1998 was passed at a time when the new municipal dispensation was still being developed and was not meant to apply to municipal elections in the post interim period. The Electoral Commission, charged with the regular review of electoral legislation, has submitted to Government a Draft Municipal Electoral Bill, to provide the necessary statutory framework for the management of local government elections, which is now before the Home Affairs Portfolio Committee.

I wish to mention a small but important improvement in our quality of life. In terms of existing legislation a woman, upon her marriage, may retain her maiden surname, may assume the surname of her husband, or join her surname with that of her husband as a double-barrelled surname. As women in the past generally assumed the surnames of their husbands as a consequence of marriage, their husbands' surnames were automatically allocated to them upon registration of their marriages in the Population Register. Should a woman, however, have wished to retain her maiden surname, written notice to that effect to the Department was required upon receipt of which her surname was amended accordingly. Such amendments could only be effected by the Department's Head Office in Pretoria. In the recent past women objected to the system of automatic registration in the Population Register under their husbands' surnames. To accommodate the needs of women in this regard in a more equitable and user-friendly way, the computer systems of the Department have been amended to allow our domestic offices to do the amendments locally, on the spot, which will largely eliminate the delays and inconveniences of the past. Furthermore, the marriage register has now been amended to include a question regarding which of the surnames a woman, after her marriage, wants to be known by. She will then be recorded under such surname when the marriage is registered and not automatically under that of her husband as was the case in the past.

The re-incorporation of the erstwhile independent and self-governing states into a unified Republic of South Africa after the 1994 general election brought about the necessity to re-organise and rationalise government printing. In pursuit of this objective the Government Printing Works has been tasked with the responsibility of establishing the National Government Printing Works, with decentralised offices and stores in the Provinces wherever necessary. Discussions with provincial governments on this issue are ongoing and progress made is satisfactory. I will be informing the Cabinet in the second half of this year on progress in detail. The down turn of this, however, is the number of superfluous staff having to be taken from the various printing establishments. The investigation relating to alternatives towards privatisation, which the Cabinet must in the final instance consider, has progressed well. A report is expected within the next month and will be presented to Cabinet after consideration by the Department. With regard to this issue in particular, as well as the Government Printing Works as a whole, I must express my particular appreciation to the Honourable Deputy Minister, Ms Sisulu, for her dedicated attention to the Printing Works.

The primary function of the Film and Public Board is the classification of all films and interactive compute games intended for distribution and/or exhibition in the Republic. The films. video and computer games industry is a rapidly expanding one and imposes increasing demands on the Board. The introduction of films in DVD and CD-ROM formats has added markedly to the workload of the Board. In addition, the Board is required to monitor the Internet for child pornography, which presents unique problems. Given the international character of the Internet, the problem of protecting our children from sexual predators requires close liaison and co-operation with law enforcement agencies in other countries, which has cost implications. One must appreciate the self-regulation of the industry, which provides basic computer programmes which bar any pornography from any given computer, thereby reducing the risk of unsolicited exposure or the exposure of minors. Nevertheless, the Board not only maintains close and collaborative contact with law enforcement agencies in other countries, but also attends workshops and conferences to discuss common problems and strategies for better and more effective co-operation. To give effect to Deputy Minister Sisulu's call for more effective protection of children from sexual exploitation and abuse, the Board is organising, in collaboration with the Office of the Deputy Minister, a national workshop on Combating Child Pornography Through Effective Law Enforcement. The workshop will bring together law enforcement agencies, including the police and the Directorate of Public Prosecutions, concerned individuals and NGOs, as well as international experts in the investigation and prosecution of child pornography offenders.

In conclusion, I wish to convey my thanks to the various statutory bodies falling under the budget appropriation of this Department and which have rendered excellent service over the past year. I refer specifically to the Immigrants Selection Board and its various Committees as well as the Film and Publication Board and Review Board. The term of office of the new committees of the Immigrants Selection Board commenced on 1 April 2000 and I wish them the best in their very important task. I also wish to thank the parliamentary committees of both Houses of Parliament for their co-operation and the work they have done with regard to the affairs of my Department. Finally I wish to convey my sincere thanks to the staff of all my Chief Directorates for their accomplishments, despite a tremendous shortage of human and other resources.

I further thank the Chairman of the Portfolio Committee, Mr D A Mokoena and Members of the Portfolio Committee for their assistance in exercising the over-seeing function of this Parliament over the Department so thoroughly.

I thank you.

Issued by the Office of the Minister of Home Affairs