"We are pleased to announce to the people of South Africa that from 4 March, the department will end the practice of issuing the abridged birth certificates and will only issue unabridged certificates," she said.

The unabridged birth certificate, which will be issued immediately at no cost, will minimise turnaround time and ensure speedy, efficient and accurate service delivery.

“It will contain particulars of both parents and their identity documents numbers,” Pandor said.

She said the current abridged birth certificates were easily forged.

“It contains only the name and ID number of the newborn baby and the mother, and that resulted in the creation of additional paper records. It also takes six to eight weeks to produce.”

Pandor said the department, with the help of the media and stakeholders throughout the country, would in the next few weeks, embark on a public awareness programme to inform and educate the public about the unabridged birth certificate.