Home Affairs (Umgeni Road Durban) Closes doors at 14:00!!!!

Home Affairs staff at the Umgeni Road Branch in Durban prevent CUSTOMERS from access to the collection office 1.5 hours BEFORE the scheduled closing time. Despite the fact that the there were close to 20 empty seats inside the office, security staff stopped anyone from entering the office at 14:00 despite the fact that the office is supposed to close at 15:30. This is the second time that I have waited (last time 45 minutes) to get entry to the building well before closing time and have not been allowed access. At least 40 people in the queue in front and behind me had the same experience. The information desk official (Mbongeni Magagula) and branch supervisor Etella Perumal insisted that this was normal operating practice. They could not see the obvious break down in service delivery taking place.

They could also not explain why banks, retail outlets, doctors and even election voting stations all allow customers to enter until the advertised closing time yet Home Affairs operates in a parallel universe where tax payers receive substandard service.

Aside from the policy of deny entry 90 minutes before closing time, the speed with which the staff process collections beggars belief! Processing a passport or ID collection should be a simple process: 1) Check customers ID (15 seconds) 2) Scan thumbprints (10 seconds) 3) Fetch new ID/passport (no more than 2 minutes if the documents are stored in alphabetical order 4) Customer signs for receipt and issue is logged on system. Banks do this on a daily basis with credit cards which carry massive ***** risk and I've never waited more than 5 minutes for this process.

What made matters even worse was the fact that there were at least 3 Home Affairs staff members and 4 security personal standing at the door for the entire duration of my wait. Had these staff been manning desks then no doubt all of the people in the queue could have been served before 15:30.