Ekandjo lambasts his own Ministry

MINISTER of Home Affairs Jerry Ekandjo has hit out at employees in his Ministry who are unprofessional.

The Minister was speaking at the opening yesterday of a six-day strategic planning workshop for the Department of Civic Affairs at Swakopmund. “I cannot leave this forum without expressing my discontent with the way the public is mistreated and mishandled by some members of the personnel of the Department of Civic Affairs.”Civic Affairs is responsible for civil registration including issuing birth, marriage and death certificates, national identity cards and the general administration of the Births, Marriages and Death Acts and Identification Act.Ekandjo said it was disheartening that some members of the public were being turned away and told lies when they enquired about documents.”This is a practice that must be stamped out.Under no circumstances should a member of public be shouted at, yelled at, cursed at or assaulted.Measures to punish culprits must be implemented to remedy this situation,” the Minister said.Addressing corruption, Ekandjo said the issue deserved the attention of the workshop.Calling those guilty of this offence self-declared enemies of society, he said they deserved to be locked up and removed entirely from contact with society as they were destructive elements.Ekandjo challenged the workshop to come up with remedial action to stop corruption.Ekandjo also said his mind “boggled” at the fact that equipment was breaking down because of a lack of planning and maintenance programmes.According to a report presented by the Division: Population Services, frequent breakdowns of equipment was a major contributing factor to the massive backlog experienced in processing identity documents (IDs).The current backlog of unprocessed ID applications is about 65 000, while there are about 25 000 processed applications on the production line.The report states that the average waiting period for an ID card can now be as long as 24 months.Delays are also blamed on the manual fingerprint system and the one laser engraver available to print cards.The engraver has a maximum production capacity of 400 cards a day, which is “highly insignificant under current circumstances”, the report states.The division has asked for additional funding of more than N$20 million for the 2004-05 year.Ekandjo said the workshop provided an excellent platform to critically examine defects in the Department.Calling his Ministry one of the most widely talked about, he said complaints from the public about service delivery needed to be addressed.”Not playing ostrich politics, we must accept that many of the complaints are authentic and genuine.I ask that you analyse and grasp the reasons behind the complaints and provide tangible solutions to them.””I cannot leave this forum without expressing my discontent with the way the public is mistreated and mishandled by some members of the personnel of the Department of Civic Affairs.”Civic Affairs is responsible for civil registration including issuing birth, marriage and death certificates, national identity cards and the general administration of the Births, Marriages and Death Acts and Identification Act.Ekandjo said it was disheartening that some members of the public were being turned away and told lies when they enquired about documents.”This is a practice that must be stamped out.Under no circumstances should a member of public be shouted at, yelled at, cursed at or assaulted.Measures to punish culprits must be implemented to remedy this situation,” the Minister said.Addressing corruption, Ekandjo said the issue deserved the attention of the workshop.Calling those guilty of this offence self-declared enemies of society, he said they deserved to be locked up and removed entirely from contact with society as they were destructive elements.Ekandjo challenged the workshop to come up with remedial action to stop corruption.Ekandjo also said his mind “boggled” at the fact that equipment was breaking down because of a lack of planning and maintenance programmes.According to a report presented by the Division: Population Services, frequent breakdowns of equipment was a major contributing factor to the massive backlog experienced in processing identity documents (IDs).The current backlog of unprocessed ID applications is about 65 000, while there are about 25 000 processed applications on the production line.The report states that the average waiting period for an ID card can now be as long as 24 months.Delays are also blamed on the manual fingerprint system and the one laser engraver available to print cards.The engraver has a maximum production capacity of 400 cards a day, which is “highly insignificant under current circumstances”, the report states.The division has asked for additional funding of more than N$20 million for the 2004-05 year.Ekandjo said the workshop provided an excellent platform to critically examine defects in the Department.Calling his Ministry one of the most widely talked about, he said complaints from the public about service delivery needed to be addressed.”Not playing ostrich politics, we must accept that many of the complaints are authentic and genuine.I ask that you analyse and grasp the reasons behind the complaints and provide tangible solutions to them.”