Long queues have become the norm at Department of Home Affairs. Photo: Supplied/ The Witness
A temporary extension of operating hours at Department of Home Affairs (DHA) offices might just take some pain out of long queues which has become the dreaded norm due to offline systems.
The extended operating hours – which will be implemented as from tomorrow (6 April) – is an attempt by the department to streamline the collection of identity documents (IDs ) ahead of the national elections on 29 May 2024.
Operational hours will be extended for five hours on Saturdays from 8am till 1pm until 25 May.
The extension will also serve to facilitate for new applications and issuance of temporary identity certificates.
“The Department of Home Affairs is scheduled to open its offices for five hours a day on Saturdays from 6 April to 25 May 2024 (excluding 27 April) for ID collection services, facilitation of new applications and issuance of Temporary Identity Certificates,” said Home Affairs spokesperson Siya Qoza.
Offices will also be resolving challenges pertaining to duplicates, amendments, rectifications and dead-alive cases with the required supporting documents.
According to Qoza, mobile offices will return to deliver IDs in the remote areas where applications were handed in.
“Local offices, working with stakeholders that include councillors, will communicate the dates, times and venues of those visits. Mobile offices will be used to support the identified local offices.
“In addition, clients can now book appointments to collect their Smart ID Cards and green barcoded ID books before visiting offices by using the Branch Appointment Booking System (BABS), which is available on the DHA website through this link, BABS,” the spokesperson added.
In the first half of 2023, Home Affairs offices lost more than 36 000 hours of work due to being offline.
This was revealed in October last year by Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi in his response to parliamentary questions from the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) home affairs spokesperson, Adrian Roos.
According to Motsoaledi, his department’s offices were not operational for a collective 36 772 hours from January to May last year.
He laid the blame for the system downtime on the department’s IT systems.
In response, State Information Technology Agency (SITA) spokesperson Tlali Tlali told News24 that system downtime can be caused by copper cable vandalism, software that takes up huge memory space, as well as the upgrading of infrastructure.
He said that SITA invested R400 million to modernise and upgrade the networks.
Tlali emphasised, however, that this does not remove the responsibility of the Department of Home Affairs to upgrade its package with SITA.
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In 2021, Netwerk24 reported on Isaac Mpofu, a Cape Town man, who came up with a plan to cash in on the long queues at the Bellville and Cape Town CBD branches of the department.
The young entrepreneur’s venture of renting out chairs at R5 an hour to all the weary souls waiting for hours outside the offices, is assisting him in paying off his study loan.
Mpofu has even been able to employ other people to assist with his “chair business”.
All thanks to the Department of Home Affairs…
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