Recently, President Cyril Ramaphosa, in the State Of the Nation Address (Sona) speech, announced that beneficiaries of the Presidential Employment Stimulus will rise to more than one million South Africans.
A total of 10 000 unemployed young people will be recruited by the Department of Home Affairs for the digitisation of paper records.
Home Affairs minister, Aaron Motsoaledi said that his department has been planning this drive for the past 18 months.
In an ENCA live interview, Motsoaledi added:
I can assure you, come May this year, the first group of young people will be on the job and within a very short place of time, we'll be having all the ten thousand of them for the next three years doing this type of job.
The department is looking to employ people who have qualifications in IT.
The aim for the department is to finish this project within 3 years or less, depending on how much money Nation Treasury will give Home Affairs.
It has been reported that these records are more than 300 million and that they stretch from 1895.
These are records of death certificates, marriage certificates, ID documents, and passports.
The digitisation of the Home Affairs records was the responsibility of SARS in the past, but the Department of Home Affairs has opted for unemployed youths this time around.
