Home Affairs minister brings 'war on queues' campaign to Durban
Durban - Frustrated people voiced their dissatisfaction with services at the uMgeni Road Home Affairs offices when the Minister, Malusi Gigaba visited the offices on Monday.
Gigaba visited the uMgeni offices as part of his "war on queues" campaign he recently launched following numerous complaints about the long waiting times, and people being turned away from Home Affairs offices.
At the offices, people complained about the frustratingly long periods they had to wait to make an application for identity documents and passports.
Gigaba instructed his officials to take down the details of those who had unsolved problems.
Gigaba at the weekend declared a "war on queues" bedevilling the department's operations.
He however cautioned people from expecting a quick fix to the problems.
"This will be a critical component of concerted efforts to ensure citizens and other clients are served professionally when they seek access, in-person or digitally, to services we offer," Gigaba told journalists in Pretoria.
While Home Affairs had had "tremendous successes in reducing turnaround times for production of documents", the critical challenge now was to reduce the amount of time clients spent in home affairs offices. The department was currently finalising action plans to deal with problem areas identified. These would be rolled-out as short, medium, and long-term interventions.
Some of the short-term actions scheduled for roll-out from Monday, included getting client contact centres working optimally, finding a solution for "unpredictable" walk-in clients and for front office space, exploring possibilities of a new shift system, attending to the unstable computer system, improving workflow, and beefing up communication with clients.
"Ultimately, to be able to serve all South Africans efficiently we need to expand our footprint. This will need to be addressed through the budget process. To complement our office footprint we are in the advanced stages of establishing a public-private partnership with the banking sector to roll-out the e-Home Affairs service to branches of four major banks – Absa, FNB, Nedbank, and Standard Bank – around the country over the next year.
"We stand committed to do the best we can to win the all-out war on queues bedevilling our operations, in spite of structural constraints and other challenges. This is not going to be a quick fix. It will be a process, one that we are committed to despite budgetary constraints and capacity restrictions. We have chosen to intervene innovatively to further improve the services we render to the public," Gigaba said.
Daily News