The Department of Labour and Home Affairs has declared a total of 20 Identification cards to be null and void and forfeited them to the state for destruction after it was found that they had been obtained illegally.
Of the 20 IDs, eight of the cards were found by a Court of law to have been unlawfully acquired on March 1st, 2012. The other 12 cards, Immigration officials found, were unlawfully obtained by foreigners.
Such documents are obtained by foreign nationals who are desperate to stay in the country and, in some cases, pay some Department employees to obtain them. Some Department of Labour officials were in the past investigated for crimes associated with helping foreign nationals obtain the country’s identification documents.
The cancellation of the IDs was confirmed by the Registrar of National Registration, Neo Lepang.
Besides the IDs, some foreign nationals were in the past caught with the country’s passports which they had illegally obtained. Some of such passports were bought from Batswana students who were schooling abroad, in countries like South Africa.
This prompted the government to change to the current e-passport which is reported to be difficult to tamper with. Early this year, 44 of such passports were stolen from the Department of Immigration offices in Palapye and there has since been no word on them. The passports were to be given to their owners when they were stolen.
