It takes 30 minutes to queue at Home Affairs: Gigaba
Home Affairs minister Malusi Gigaba has provided an update on
his ‘War on Queues’ campaign, launched in April.
Speaking at a media briefing on
Monday (23 July), Gigaba said that the programme was beginning
to show signs of progress.
“A monitoring tool was developed, to measure average waiting
time, from the time the client receives a ticket to the time
the client receives the product or service,” he said.
“On average it takes 25 to 30 minutes to issue a product to the
client. This analysis necessitated a review of workflow
process.”
According to Gigaba this includes a pilot to redesign the
workflow, which will include separating those collecting
passports from the ones collecting smart ID cards. He added
that the pilot has already been successfully conducted at the
Pretoria office (Byron) and Cape Town office (Barrack Street).
“A directive was issued to commence rolling-out to the
remaining 182 live capture offices with two or more collection
counters,” he said.
Online Service and
competency assessments
According to Gigaba, home affairs is also developing
mechanisms to prioritise those that have applied online through
the eHomeAffairs channel.
“Currently, we have noted that even those that have applied
online are still not prioritised when they get to our offices;
they still stand in queues as those doing walk-in
applications,” he said.
“Senior managers from the head office continue to be deployed
to provinces to monitor and support implementation.”
He added that his department is currently developing a full
skills matrix to determine the training and development
areas required for each office manager.
“Competencies so far identified include, leadership, managing
relations, problem-solving, project management and client
service orientation,” he said.
“Since this assessment is still ongoing, we have thus far not
yet finalised the issue of the probable redeployment of some
managers to offices commensurate with their skills and
competency levels.
“This we will do as soon as we have completed the skills and
competency evaluation and assessed if managers are accordingly
appropriately deployed.”
Problem areas
Gigaba said that he had appointed Dimension Data to assist in
assessing networks of the 184 live capture offices.
Problem areas uncovered in Dimension Data’s report showed that
the biggest contributor to system downtime is unavailability of
power in many offices, wherein uninterrupted power supply and
generator failed to switch.
Other problem areas related to the Telkom Dataline and power
management.
“System downtime affects offices for an average of 20 days in
one month,” said Gigaba.
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