‘VISITING Empangeni Home Affairs is like a total waste of money and time,’ said a disgruntled old man, obviously fed up with waiting in the sun outside the office gate.
Mkhulu Xulu* (not his real name) said he woke up at 5am, took a bus to Empangeni to collect his ID document, after receiving an SMS saying his ID is ready for collection.
‘I arrived here at 7am, and waited outside the locked gate.
‘When we ask why we have to wait outside, we are told they will call us when it’s our turn.’
Grandmothers, grandfathers and young people all sang the same song: ‘Home affairs employees working at this office don’t care about the welfare of their clients.’
Home Affairs responds
Empangeni Home Affairs Office Manager Vusi Mjadu said, ‘Our office opens at 7:30am, and we start by calling in 20 customers for ID collections, 20 for applications, 20 for the old system and another 20 for names and surname changing.’
Mjadu continued to say after they finished with these, they call in more people to be assisted.
He said SASSA is the source of the problem; which makes pensioners flock to home affairs every time they encounter problems with their ID documents during their pension pay-outs.
‘The new ID cards are causing a huge headache – when an elderly listens to hearsay about some story their pension will be cut if they don’t have the new ID cards, they all gather here for applications.
‘We have had numerous meetings with SASSA officials to find the solution, and they have told us no pensions will be cut, yet the elderly are afraid of losing their pensions.’
As an intervention, Mjadu said they have even improvised a method to write down all those who were not helped the previous day, so they get attended to first thing the following day, which also didn’t work.
‘Sometimes we are here till 6pm, trying to help as many people as we can,’ Mjadu lamented.
