Following numerous complaints from members of the public about the shocking state of the local Home Affairs office, the Democratic Alliance (DA) constituency head for Stellenbosch Municipality, Dr Leon Schreiber, submitted a series of parliamentary questions to the Minister of Home Affairs on 25 February. In his response, the Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, was forced to admit that the Stellenbosch Home Affairs office is close to outright collapse. (See response here).
According to Home Affairs’ own service access model, the Stellenbosch office is supposed to be staffed by 41 officials if it is to adequately tend to the needs of the local community. But the office currently only has 6 staff members, meaning that it is operating at only 14% of its capacity. The office is also supposed to be at least 1 746 square meters in size, but in reality, the Stellenbosch office is four times too small, at only 406 square meters.
If the office was properly staffed and sized in terms of Home Affairs’ own plan, it would be able to serve 168 000 customers per year, or 811 people per day. However, as the Minister admits, “due to the office space constraints and internal capacity, the office can only accommodate…222 clients that queue in Stellenbosch daily.”
In response to the DA’s parliamentary question, the Minister has undertaken to recruit four more officials from the end of March. But that will still leave the office woefully short of the space and the 41 officials it needs to operate properly.
In the well-run DA-led Stellenbosch Municipality, we refuse to accept such pathetically low standards. Our residents deserve better, which is why the DA will shortly launch a formal petition to Parliament calling for the Stellenbosch Home Affairs office to be fully capacitated. We call on all residents who are sick and tired of standing in endless queues at Home Affairs to contact their local DA councillor or branch to add their name to our petition as soon as we roll it out. After collecting as many signatures as possible, Dr Schreiber will submit the petition to Parliament, which will force the Department of Home Affairs to appear before Parliament and account for the way in which they have let down the people of Stellenbosch.