The Department of Home Affairs says it has activated its Alive Status Verification service - so South Africans can now check to see if they really are living.
Following incidents where people were “fraudulently declared dead”, the department has urged South Africans to check their status on the countries population register.
The service forms part of the department's Track&Trace system for ID status verification - a self-help service, which allows citizens to interact with the department virtually. The department says citizens can use the department's Web site or SMS to verify their alive or deceased status.
The Alive Status Verification is run on the department's Track&Trace system, which is also used to track ID books and passport applications and verify a persons' marriage status.
"They will be required to enter their ID number and press the Verify button to see if they are alive or deceased," the department said. South Africans could also use their mobile devices to send an SMS to a specified number - an SMS would then be sent to confirm their status as either alive or deceased.
If a person finds that their status is incorrect, they would then be required to visit their local Home Affairs office.
"In an event that a person is registered as 'deceased' when still alive, he or she must report to a local Home Affairs office with an affidavit, obtained from a police station, confirming that they are still alive," the department said.
The department says that it will, on submission of an affidavit as proof of their status, ask the complainant to fill in a form and take a full set of fingerprints to investigate how the client was declared dead on the system and will report back within a few weeks to the client on the outcome of its investigation.
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