Home Affairs Declares War on Long Queues

In a bid to cut down on snaking queues at Home Affairs offices, Minister Malusi Gigaba has set the process of implementing short term interventions to deal with long queues in motion through a War on Queues campaign.

The campaign follows an assessment report conducted by the department, after being bombarded by queries from members of the public and journalists (including SAPeople, after many of you complained) about the time spent at Home Affairs offices.

The department says it has already started with the implementation of some of its short-term interventions, focusing on improving management of its offices and streamlining workflow.

Offices have been segmented into green, yellow and red… based on their performances; and a report on performance management interventions is to be taken immediately in the red offices, said Minister Gigaba at a briefing in Tshwane on Sunday.

In addition, other interventions are to be rolled-out including a report on immediate interventions in Orlando West, Wynberg in Alexandra, Pietermaritzburg, Centurion, East London and Umgeni on reducing waiting times and ensuring people aren’t waiting outside to be served.

A one-stop workstation – which will take fingerprints and photos – is to be piloted; and 78 mobile units are being refurbished to be deployed across the country in the second half of this year.

The interventions will be rolled-out as short, medium and long term interventions with some of the short term interventions set to kick in from Monday, 23 April 2018.

The report identified some of the causes of the snaking queues as being high client volumes, possible discontinuation of Saturday working hours, unstable systems, inefficient work flow process, leadership issues and front office space issues.

In addition to these the assessment report highlighted that the following factors compound the problem of long queues:

• Poor management in some office
• Ineffective utilization of staff (over and under supply)
• Lack of an appointment system
• Inefficient management of queues
• Concurrent running of manual and automated systems
• Uneven distribution of offices based on demographics
• Misinformation and discontinuation of green barcoded IDs
• Poor signage at offices

While the Minister pleaded for patience while efforts are carried out to reduce lines, he added that the department is in talks with the banking sector to increase the roll-out of ehomeaffairs services.

“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 ehomeaffairs service to branches of four major banks – Absa, FNB, Nedbank and Standard Bank – around the country over the next year,” said the Minister Gigaba. – SAnews.gov.za