FROM developing a heat map showing customers which offices have long queues to increasing working hours during peak period, the Department of Home Affairs says it is implementing several strategies to deal with long queues.
Thulani Mavuso, the department’s director-general, said this when he updated the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs on the progress that has been made to deal with long queues at the department’s front-line offices.
This led to the Minister directing the department to conduct an assessment in order to develop intervention strategies that will deal with the challenges of long queues and to improve service delivery, which was followed by the launch of the “war on queues campaign”.
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He said to improve coordinated communication the department intends on developing a heat map on their website by utilising cell phones.
“So basically what you do, you check the number of people who are in the office based on a number of cell phones in the area. The heat map will tell you how many people are there, it will show whether it is red or green, by just utilising the location of the cell phones which are in that area,” Mavuso said.
He said this way, clients will be able to visit the heat map on the website to know where the long queues are with a view of going to offices with shorter queues.
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To deal with unpredictable walk-ins, Mavuso said the department was looking into developing a system that will enable it to issue tickets for overflow clients.
“We want to encourage the utilisation of the eHome Affairs system to stay in a particular office, we then create a counter that deals specifically with those people who have already done their application online, all they just need is to just capture biometrics. We are also looking at developing a smart phone app for the re-issue of passport and smart ID cards. In this regard, we are thinking that we should allow clients to be able to apply for the re-issue of their documents without them coming to do the enrollment,” he said.
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