Sad Experience At Dept Home Affairs

It is with a feeling of disappointment that I write this review and hope that Dr Schreiber gets to read it, as all the wonderful technology he is implementing, will not have the desired effect if he also does not address the problem of untrained and unmotivated staff On September 25th, I decided to renew my passport and as my wife's passport was nearing the end of its valid period, although still valid, we decided to also renew hers as well, and in accordance with what we have read from statements by the minister, we decided to then at the same time, to apply for the new ID card. So we went very early to the Home Affairs office in Somerset West and endured the excessive waiting for anything to happen, I do not want to elaborate on this experience, but be informed that a visit involves an entire morning starting from 07;30 and ending just before 13;00 So we waited, it would be nice if some kind of progress report could be made available on the dha web site, for all you see day after day is "Branch processing in progress" Then, a month later, on Saturday, October 25th, we both received emails stating that we had to visit the home office within 14 working days, as there were problems.In my case they mentioned missing documentation and in my wife's case, no reason was given.I immediately went to the websites and saw in both cases the ID documents were to be uploaded, which was strange, as we had both our ID documents scanned and captured at the home Office. In my case, I managed to upload my ID document again and it seemed to be accepted. In my wife's case, even with three attempts to upload, no acknowledgement was given. So on Monday, October 27th, we phoned the 0800 number given and after eventually getting it answered, we were informed that the office had lost all my wife's information and we had to return to have it all captured again. So, as previously mentioned, one needs a full morning to visit the home Office and we could not do that immediately, but did try on Thursday afternoon, October 30th to go there only to be chased away with the explanation that if you do not appear at 08:00. your applications will not be attended to, and you will not even be allowed inside. We then planned to visit the office this coming Tuesday, November 4th. But logging into the websites again on Saturday, October 1st,, on my wife's application it stated that it has been cancelled due to unresponsiveness from the applicant This statement was now 5 working days after receiving our first notice saying we should visit within 14 working days, the staff in Somerset West had decided that a phone call and 5 working days was enough for them to cancel and not worry about the information THAT THEY HAS LOST,