Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba has declared a “war on queues” bedevilling the department’s operations, but admitted it will not be a quick fix.
“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 said.
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 their offices.
Action plans would be rolled out as short-medium-and long-term interventions.
Some of the short-term actions being implemented from Monday, include 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,” Gigaba says.
“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.”
ANA