It is hoped that the Dundee Department of Home Affairs will no longer have the issue of being constantly offline due to network problems.
This after a router was delivered to Home Affairs with the help of Ward 6 Councillor Zitha Shelembe.
Cllr Shelembe took heed of the community’s cries after he was told that Home Affairs had been offline for two weeks.
In a meeting with Dundee Home Affairs manager Mbongeni Mhlongo, Shelembe tabled the community’s complaints and came up with a solution to involve the provincial manager for intervention.
“Home Affairs being offline for the past two weeks is of great concern, because the services they offer are needed daily by the community,” said the councillor.
He added that many people travel from as far as Nquthu and other surrounding areas to get their Identity Documents, for example. “At the meeting, we decided to call Home Affairs provincial manager Mr Mncube and asked him to provide a router to improve connectivity at the Dundee office.”
Shelembe further explained that the Dundee office is dependent on the Telkom server from Ulundi, which has poor connectivity especially during and after load-shedding.
He concluded by saying that after involving Home Affairs Deputy Minister Njabulo Nzuza, who had promised to look into the matter with his IT department, the router was delivered and installed in less than two weeks.
“It was a great intervention from the provincial manager, as well as Cllr Shelembe, who ensured that we got the router,” said Mhlongo.
He added that having a router will make life much easier, as it means that the system will no longer go offline… And if it does, it will probably be because of the service provider (MTN).
“The router was installed on Thursday and we worked until 20:30, as people have been struggling for some time now. We managed to do 80 applications and 69 collections.
“Those who came to apply for birth certificates were also assisted,” explained Mhlongo.
He concluded that the offline problem will be a thing of the past; the only disturbance likely to be encountered is being offline for only 10 minutes while the generator kicks in.
Nomthandazo Ngubeni, who has been trying to sort out her ID for the past two weeks and had to return home because the system was offline, is excited to finally complete her ID application.
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