Extended Home Affairs hours will mean nothing if long queues and offline systems aren’t addressed
19 October 2021
While the DA has taken note of the long-overdue extension of Home Affairs office hours from 8:00 to 17:30, we do call on Minister Aaron Motsoaledi to tighten the reins on poor queue management and downtime for these extra hours to produce results.
A case in point is the absurd scenario at Soshanguve NAFCOC Home Affairs, raised by DA Councillor Sandy Mbuvha, which is the only Home Affairs office issuing smart IDs across Soshanguve, Hammanskraal and Mabopane and attracts applicants as far as Moretele in the North-West Province. A catchment area of well over one million people. The queues form outside, extend inside on the ground floor, downstairs to the basement and both sides of the passageway to the entrance of the office. These overflows need to be assessed and Mobile Units deployed to areas experiencing the most congestion.
The DA has been working on a three-point plan to bring hope to citizens who suffer poor service delivery daily in Home Affairs queues.
Firstly to update Home Affairs’ outdated network equipment, where the DA managed to get a commitment from the Ministers of Communications and Home Affairs to put forward a plan by the end of the year. This is scheduled to be tabled in Parliament on 30 November 2021.
The second is to place cameras at Home Affairs offices, where the DA got a resolution through Parliament for Home Affairs to set up cameras outside and inside Home Affairs offices to record incidents of collusion of officials to sell spaces in queues and investigate footage where citizens are mistreated.
And finally, a booking system, which the DA has been calling for and was finally announced by the Minister of Home Affairs in August.
The DA gets things done, and will continue to track queues outside Home Affairs offices as demand surges for citizens who need their ID certificates to vote in the Local Government Elections.
Issued by Adrian Roos, DA Shadow Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, 19 October 2021
