Poor Service

I would like to please share my recent experience with Home Affairs, especially regarding Home Affairs Randburg.

I went to Home Affairs Randburg to apply for my Passport on 08 October 2020. I arrived there at about 07:40. The queues were long but I understood this as they always are.

I got the front of the queue where I could see the door at about 12:00. I remained standing there for 3 hours. In these 3 hours the queue had not moved at all. Every so often, one of the officials would come out and tell us that the systems were offline, then still offline and so on. I eventually got inside and while waiting for my biometrics, the system went offline again. We were all asked to please come back the next day. We were told that we would be helped first, so long as we bring the service number allocated to us on the Thursday. I also personally spoke to the manager, Lehasa, and he told me to contact him with any problems I might have.

Fast track to the Thursday. Same scenario as the day before. I was only helped after 13:00 and only left there after 15:00.

To make matters worse, on the Friday, two separate people told me that they had paid the security guard to let them skip the queue. Over and above that, I saw someone take money out of their wallet, give it to the security guard and was then allowed to go inside. Some of the other people told me that they were approached by officials and asked to take their cell phone numbers down so that they can get in contact at night to “make a plan” for the following day. Bribing is one thing but doing it as blatant and in the open like that, is just stupid.

It’s now been 10 working days and I’ve been trying to contact someone to give me an idea about the status of my passport as I need it for work purposes. None of the Home Affairs departments answer their telephones – I have been on hold several times for 1+ hours.

I then decided to give the manager a call, as he told me contact him if I had any queries. He, Lehasa, answered and was very reluctant to speak to me. He was extremely rude and sarcastic to me and had no intention of helping me. After some time, he just said, “13 working days,” and cut the call.