Home Affairs funds employee benefits with massive passport price hikes

7 October 2022

Please find attached soundbites in English and Afrikaans by Adrian Roos MP.

The DA will write to the parliamentary portfolio committee chairperson on Home Affairs to demand that Minister Aaron Motsoaledi accounts for the exorbitant increase in the fees for travel documents.

From 1 November 2022 South Africans will be expected to cough up 50% more for standard adult and child passports and 100% more for a maxi adult passport.

This move, and its timing, shows that Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi is simply out of touch with the cost of living crisis faced by South Africans. Skyrocketing interest rates, fuel prices, cost of food and costs to deal with the electricity crisis are placing pressure on the budgets of households across the spectrum.

While South Africans are constantly asked to tighten their belts, the Government Printing Works (GPW), who prints the passports, has seen it fit to increase "employee benefits" by 43% and "professional services" by 250% between 2019 and 2022. These professional services include legal fees to perform work that can be done by in-house legal resources and to defend the executive against employee grievances at taxpayer expense.

The GPW already generates a sizeable profit which is returned to the fiscus, and these outrageous passport price increases are merely a move to siphon more funds off cash-strapped South Africas by stealth. What adds insult to injury is that South Africans abroad will pay double these fees for the shocking passport renewal service they receive.

It is time for the Minister to reign in the runaway expenditure on salaries, employee benefits and perks for deployed cadres and suspended officials and consider ordinary South Africans. The motto of Home Affairs is "We Care" but clearly the opposite is true.

The DA will continue to fight to defend South Africans against this unjustifiable cost increase.

Issued by Adrian Roos, DA Shadow Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, 7 October 2022