Department of Home Affairs Paarl - Unacceptable Conditions

Department of Home Affairs PAARL.

I live outside of South Africa and booked an appointment in Paarl, coming from Blouberg (45 min drive) to hopefully be out of there quickly and efficiently considering the booking - Oh how wrong I was.

The Passport application took 4 hours and the collection (that was apparently ready) took 6 hours - from 9am until 14h45.

Some of the staff are very friendly, some are unbelievably unprofessional. The long of the short of it is this:

I stood in line next to a young African mother and her 3 month old baby, this mother was there with an umbrella in one hand for sun protection and her baby in the other arm. She stood in this line for 3 hours, I and two others helped her to hold the umbrella so that she could breastfeed, before I found her a spot to sit at the entrance until eventually she came back in line and at 5 hours they finally helped her. I gave our chairs that I collected from inside to elderly outside in line.

My biggest issue with this whole scenario is that there are many women with their babies and elderly that will not have help from others and they won't have an umbrella, they commute from far with no money for refreshments, food and, or come another day - they have no choice but to stand in the blistering heat.

When I asked whether mothers with their babies could be helped first, I was met with the response that "babies are not considered", only elderly. I think at bare minimum these " managers" with their clipboards could AT VERY LEAST go around and give elderly and mothers with babies chairs.

I was absolutely shocked to the core with the lack of humility. Regardless of the "systems are down & slow" this treatment was unacceptable.

I have been told other branches in Cape Town are known to bump up the mums and elderly to the front.

Hire more considerate people to manage others when they are made to wait for such a long time in these conditions.