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SA official defends biometric capturing of travellers at major airports

Xinhua, October 29, 2016 Adjust font size:

Biometric capturing enhances South Africa's capacity to uniquely identify individuals and confirm the identity of travellers with the highest possible degree of certainty, security and efficiency, a senior government official said on Friday.

Although it has increased the processing time per traveller, it remains a key component in order to protect national security, said Mkuseli Apleni, Director-General at the Department of Home Affairs (DHA).

He was responding to mounting complaints that biometic capturing of travellers has led to lengthy queues and delayed flights.

In December 2015, the DHA introduced biometric capturing of travellers at four international airports, namely, OR Tambo International Airport and Lanseria Airport in Johannesburg, Cape Town International Airport and King Shaka International Airport in Durban.

To improve facilitation, South African citizens have been automatically exempted from this process.

The capturing of biometrics on arrival at the port of entry assisted with the relaxation of the immigration regulation which had initially required persons from visa required countries to appear in person during the visa application process, Apleni told a press briefing in Johannesburg.

Added benefits include doing away with the requirement for a transit visa for travellers using ports of entry that have biometric capacity.

"The biometric programme of the department remains a priority and we are committed to a phase in approach," Apleni said.

The DHA, he said, has a mandate to ensure the effective and secure management of immigration and to facilitate the movement of persons through OR Tambo International Airport as one of its priority ports of entry.

Despite existing processes being designed to optimally manage the traveller demand, under-capacitation remains a critical vulnerability in the management of immigration at airports, resulting in complaints about lengthy queues and delayed flights, he said.

The total number of immigration counters at OR Tambo International Airport is 87 and even with a 100 percent staff attendance, not all the counters can be fully staffed, Apleni said.

"We are currently managing a four shift system per week reinforcing our day shift to deal with terminals experiencing a high volume of travellers. This still translates into a situation where more than 40 percent of our immigration counters cannot be operational at peak periods, given limited staff capacity and the need to balance shift operations over a 24hr cycle," Apleni said.

This has been a subject of substantial media and negative sentiments arising from stakeholders despite the efforts to modernize and advance the integrity of processes at the immigration frontline, he said. Endit