THE Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has implemented new opening and closing hours for the civic services front offices to improve services to clients. The new time time slots have been affective since Sunday, 1 March. This move will ensure that DHA offices have enough staff to attend to all clients professionally.
Home Affairs Director-General, Mkuseli Apleni, said the decision on new opening and closing hours followed an extensive consultative process with organised labour as well as benchmarking with relevant stakeholders, both internal and external. “The new opening and closing hours will benefit the department’s clients, managers, staff members and the organisation as a whole.
“Importantly, the new opening and closing hours will afford managers and staff sufficient time to interact with each other on service delivery matters and front office operations,” he said. With the new opening and closing hours, staff members will still work a 40-hour week, spread over six days, Monday to Saturday. They will work only two Saturdays in a month. This also means that the new opening and closing hours will not change the maximum number of hours DHA officials are required to work.
Office hours for DHA will be from 7.30am to 4.30pm, including a 30-minute lunch break. Opening and closing hours for serving clients will be from 8am to 4pm.
“It was decided that two shifts will be required to ensure successful implementation. The first shift will commence at 7.30 and end at 4pm. The second shift will commence at 9am and end at 4.30pm,” added Apleni. The Saturday shift will commence at 8am and end at 1pm for staff members, and from 8.30am to 12.30pm for service to the public. Staff members will alternate between the two shifts, thus ensuring flexibility with regard to the Saturday shift.
Apleni said the department has also decided that, in order to accommodate the need for operational meetings between managers and staff, the various offices will open for clients at 9am on the last Wednesday of every month.
