Minister on geolocations and respecting citizen privacy

Minister of Communications, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, has reassured South Africans that their privacy will not be violated when using geolocations on their cellphones, in the fight against COVID-19.

This follows government’s announcement that tracer teams from the Health Department will be allowed to use phone locations of people who have tested positive for the virus, in order to track down the people they may have come in contact with.

Ministers representing the national command council gave an update on Thursday on the revised regulations for the lockdown.

Ndabeni-Abrahams is adamant that people’s privacy will be respected.

“When we say we will use cellphone numbers it doesn’t mean that we will take anybody’s numbers, let me provide clarity there. As the minister explained, those that go and test and are found to be positive as they fill in their information, the health department will then seek permission from the ECNS licences to access their cellphone’s geolocations.” said Ndabeni-Abrahams

The minister added that government was doing all it could to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the country, which includes the use of geolocations for contact tracing.