The Department of Home Affairs will implement concessions that have been made to the controversial visa regulations within three months, the department said on Wednesday.

Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba said during a discussion on visa regulations that his department has “taken note of recent statements concerning actions taken regarding concessions that Cabinet had made to ease the implementation of the amended immigration legislation and regulations”.

Gigaba said these concessions would be made within a three-month period, from November 1, 2015 to January 31, 2016.

The concessions would include the capturing of biometrics in a pilot phase at ports of entry into South Africa.

The biometrics pilot would start with OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, Durban’s King Shaka International Airport and Cape Town International Airport.

Gigaba said that recommendations around biometrics would “afford better measures to keep South Africans and those within the republic safer from the evils that evidently exist globally. These are progressive interventions and we welcome them.”

The department of home affairs would also be expected to introduce an Accredited Tourism Country Programme for states such as China, India and Russia.

Home Affairs would also look at introducing a long-term multiple-entry visa that would enable frequent travelers coming into the South Africa to stay for a period that is longer than three months, and up to three years.

Business people and academics would benefit from this long-term entry visa.

Gigaba said home affairs “has fulfilled its mandate to facilitate safe movement while extending non-visa requirements to the top tourism generating countries.”

The minister said other actions the department would undertake include ensuring that school principals were aware that they were responsible for issuing letters confirming that learners have permission to travel on school tours outside the country.

Gigaba said his department would look into the possibility of extending the validity of the parental consent affidavit to six months.

He said home affairs was “urgently looking at the legal instrument, to facilitate the requirement of birth certificates for non-visa requiring countries being replaced by a strong advisory. This requires a legal instrument as our current laws do not draw distinctions between children from different countries.”

He added that it was essential to go about this with utmost care: “If we proceed carelessly without that legal instrument, we will be undermining our own legislation and placing ourselves in a constitutionally compromising situation for which we will be legally liable.”

He said that these recommendations around the visa regulations meant that the country’s “immigration officers are better empowered to act against the illicit movement of children” and were a “step forward in promoting the Children’s Act and introducing basic but critical national security measures.”

Gigaba noted that the regulations took effect in 2014 when there were already concerns about the state of tourism, not only in our country, but globally.

The visa regulations for children came into effect in June earlier this year.

Gigaba noted that other concessions made were for implementation in a year and beyond.

“We are hard at work to ensure implementation of these concessions, starting with those prioritised for the first three months, ending January 31, 2016.”

Key to successful implementation, he said, was to “work with all our department’s partners and stakeholders to make the new visa regime work for the country, ensuring child safety, national security and economic development.”

“We carry the mandate of being the first line of defence in this regard for the country and therefore must be willing to risk some measure of unpopularity to ensure national security is not forsaken.”