The home affairs department will open its offices for extended hours during the voter registration period, it announced on Tuesday.
"This is to assist citizens who wish to apply for and collect their identity documents in order to register for the 2009 elections," the department said in a statement.
The registration period is from November 3 to November 9. Home Affairs offices countrywide will be open between 7am to 5pm.
"During these hours, staff will be dispatched to head office to provide back office support with processing of applications at over 260 local offices and service points across the country," it said.
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All those who had applied for their IDs in recent months were urged to collect them from the offices they applied to.
Furthermore, the department said anyone who had lost their green bar-coded ID to apply for a Temporary Identity Certificate (TIC) - that can be issued immediately - at any Home Affairs office in order for them to register to vote.
However, this was subject to verification of the applicant's fingerprints.
The TIC is valid for three months and can be used as a form of identity while the application for a green bar-coded ID is being processed.
To minimise time and delays, a new online fingerprint verification system had been introduced to allow the immediate approval of a person's fingerprints when applying for the re-issuing of an ID.
"A track and trace system is another measure aimed at bettering services, it allows applicants to check how far in the processing queue their IDs are by means of an SMS," the department said.
"To receive an update of their ID application status, clients will need to SMS the word 'ID', leave space and followed by the ID number to 3255. Each SMS cost R1,00 charged by the network operator."
At the beginning of this year it took an average of 120 days for applicants to receive IDs. This had now been reduced to an average of 40 days, the department said. - Sapa
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