The Ministry of Home Affairs, Immigration, Safety and Security has suspended the registration of Identity Document cards (IDs) for two weeks, due to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases among staff members at various offices countrywide.

Executive Director (ED) in ministry Etienne Maritz, said this in a media statement issued on Tuesday, noting that ID applications will be suspended from 16 June until 02 July 2021.

He said for the past three weeks, the ministry has registered a high number of COVID-19 cases among its staff members at different offices countrywide, a situation which has forced the Ministry to suspend some of its services that are crucial to the public.

‘Furthermore, due to the manual fingerprint capturing during the ID registration process, physical contact between the clients and the staff members cannot be avoided, which defies the protocol of social distancing,’ said Maritz.

Members of the public who are not in urgent need of national documents especially the IDs that require physical contact, the ED said, should delay their applications and help the government in fighting the pandemic.

Source: Namibia Press Agency