More than 24 000 deaths have been registered with Home Affairs offices in Gauteng between March and June 2020. This has been revealed by Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi in a written reply to a DA parliamentary question in the NCOP.
The period covers the hard lockdown.
There were more than 116 000 deaths registered with Home Affairs offices across the country between March and June 2020. Gauteng registered 24 064 deaths with Home Affairs offices in the first three months of the lockdown.
COVID-19 excess deaths cause panic:
However, in March to June 2019, Gauteng had registered 35 511 deaths.
This means Gauteng had registered 11 447 less deaths with Home Affairs offices under lockdown between March and June 2020, than the previous year during the same period.
ID Documents
The Home Affairs department has urged those who have made application for smart identity document to collect them at their nearest offices. The department says it has a backlog of identity documents that needs to be collected at their offices across the country.
Over 300 000 identity documents have not been collected yet.
“Currently, we are just sitting with more than 300 000 identity documents that have been sitting with us for quite some time that have not been collected. But right now, we estimate about 65 000 people who came through to make temporary identity certificates and that 65 000 we expect it come back and get their smart identity documents. But we know that legacy backlog is about 300 000,” Deputy Minister for the department Njabulo Nzuza said.
