Alberton Home Affairs condemns illegal dealings

The Alberton Home Affairs office distances itself from reports of unlawful dealings reportedly taking place outside its premises.

Disgruntled locals, who recently visited Home Affairs, alleged the public couldn’t receive proper service without illegally paying an amount of R150.

The amount, received by ‘vendors’, is said to secure a person entry into the premises, saving them time to stand in a long queue for hours.

However, the department dissociated itself from these claims, saying it has been made aware of this and strongly condemns it.

Musa Sotobe, who reached out to the RECORD, said services at the Home Affairs office are dissatisfactory and there are dubious activities involved.

“We arrived here in the early hours, but those who arrived after us were assisted first. They wouldn’t give us any explanation, but instead they said they know what they are doing. We were also given forms to fill out and this is done so that it will seem as though they assisted a lot of people on the day,” he said.

An unhappy Mzwakhe Majola echoed his sentiments and also assured that people pay to be in front of queues or to be let inside the Home Affairs premises.

“My wish is for them to improve their services, their communication and start operating on time. I’ve now been here for the fourth time, and in those times have never been assisted because of long queues. One man told us he paid R150 to gain entry. He had liaised with vendors outside the premises,” he said.

Home Affairs

Golden Malatji of Alberton Home Affairs said services are adequately delivered, although there are challenging factors that contribute to people’s complaints.

“I have received the complaint of people paying money and I’ve interfered. But public members are the ones who condone this same thing. We discourage them from paying any money.

“We work on service charter, and services here are rendered on a first come, first serve basis,” he said.
Malatji said in normal circumstances they have at least 600 to 700 people hoping to be served and would often help at least 400 from those numbers.

“I always come out and interact with people on an individual basis and explain to them how we run services. In the morning we give out tickets for the purposes of benchmarking, and if technicalities arise, it will mean their services will be affected on the day,” he said.

According to Malatji, contributing factors of challenges are long-standing queues, which are caused by system technicalities as well as power outages.

He said some services are going to be temporally suspended under the level three lockdown to curb the influx of numbers.

“Due to level three, we suspended the application of IDs and passports until further instruction. Services open include temporaly IDs, birth registration, death registrations, reprints for those who want to attend emergency issues and marriages,” he said.