The Home Affairs office at Rundu is inundated with stateless and undocumented persons who turned up for the mass registration process over the past few weeks. 

Stateless and undocumented people of all ages have been flooding the home affairs building in the hopes of getting registered and possibly qualifying for Namibian social grants. 

That is the word on the street, but the Deputy Director of Civil Registration in the northeast, Fillemon Shipena, says they have been misinformed. 

Undocumented and stateless residents from Bravo Settlement in Kavango West got an opportunity to be registered by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Immigration, Safety and Security.

The initiative was held on Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day, usually celebrated on August 10 each year.

Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day is about increasing public awareness of the importance of the timely registration of vital events, particularly births and deaths.

ǃNamiǂNûs Constituency Councillor Suzan Ndjaleka says her office has embarked on an initiative to regularise undocumented long-term residents of Luderitz.

Ndjaleka has identified five stateless residents in Luderitz who were born in South Africa and have been living in the southern coastal town for over forty years.

Because of this, undocumented people, mostly the elderly, do not benefit from the government's social grants.