Neelam Rahim / neelam@radioislam.co.za

2 min read
05 February 2023 / 22:25 pm CAT

Photo: DA

As with so many other issues, the DA has discovered that Home Affairs applications are being deleted due to loadshedding. This is also possible in other state departments, and the DA will be doing oversight in the coming weeks to ascertain whether it is indeed the case.

In an interview with Radio Islam International, the DA’s Adrian Roos said the home affairs systems contain sensitive data like the national population register.

“It’s a situation where the national government is expected to urgently protect the information with power protection systems,” he added.

While there have been many talks surrounding the fourth industrial revolution, there is the struggle for basic systems such as backups and ensuring the computer systems are running.

According to Roos, the government has provided generators to the Minister and Deputies and only started assessing issues like these after that.

Documentation has been deleted from the backend system hosted in Centurion around the time of loadshedding, as they have yet to be replicated or backed up.

The DA has received complaints about the situation, which has become a tremendous inconvenience to the applicants as most of them have to reapply.

Meanwhile, the issue has been raised, and the DA has made many attempts to address the issue since 2019.

According to Roos, a presentation was received from the home affairs portfolio committee concerning the offline system. The report stated that the system was mostly offline due to power or environmental issues.

“There has not been a sufficient amount of progress considering that we are aware of loadshedding for a number of years, the department has not taken any steps to resolve this issue,” he said.

Listen to the interview with Mufti Yusuf Moosagie and Adrian Roos on Radio Islam’s podcast.