Home Affairs' turn-around plan
Matome Sebelebele
27 November 2003
The department of home affairs has outlined an ambitious plan to enable it to provide services to the country's citizens more efficiently and to turn around its immigration and refugee services.
Presenting the department's turn-around strategy in Johannesburg recently, Director-General Barry Gilder, who took office in May, said his department aims to overhaul its operations, resources, service delivery and relations with the public.
Seen as crucial to this is revamping the department's regional offices and dealing with a chronic staff shortage, particularly at management level.
Gilder said the department would be establishing offices in townships countrywide to help reduce the distances that people had to travel to apply for identity documents, birth certificates and other services.
At the same time, the department was developing a short-, medium- and long-term personnel replenishment strategy. In 1995, the department
established 7 499 posts, of which 5 958 have been filled, leaving 1 557 vacant posts. Of the 1 557 posts, only 370 are funded.
The main challenge facing recruitment of personnel was funding, Gilder said. The National Treasury had indicated that Home Affairs would receive R500-million to add to its current R1.9-billion annual budget. However, for the department effectively to address its resource challenges, it needed a R3.1-billion budget, Gilder said.
"This is obviously not nearly enough, but it's a start, and will enable us at least to begin to put the capacity in place to absorb more resources in the years ahead, as well as to tackle the most urgent challenges facing us."
Gilder added that the department was in the process of establishing a Home Affairs Academy which would serve as a point of entry for officials, where they will undergo six-months' training in a range of skills necessary for delivering services effectively.
Tackling
corruption
Gilder said the department was developing a plan with members of intelligence and the police to tackle the syndicates behind corruption in the department.
He said the department was a prime target for corruption as it provided an essential service - documentation - that allowed syndicates to carry out criminal acts in and outside the country.
"We have agreed on the need to implement a holistic approach to countering corruption", Gilder said. "This includes developing a plan with our colleagues in the intelligence and law enforcement community to tackle the syndicates that are perpetually corrupting our officials.
"NIA (The National Intelligence Agency) is currently leading a process to develop a fundamental assessment of the problem of corruption in Home Affairs."
Immigration control
The Immigration Control Offices, which monitor the movement of people in and out of South Africa, will also undergo
transformation into a properly structured, trained and equipped immigration law enforcement agency, Gilder said.
Immigration is one of Home Affairs' most severely challenged services, with serious shortages in and lack of training among staff.
According to Statistics SA, in 1994 the country received 3.8 million visitors, with the number doubling to 6.5 million in 2002.
However, of the 5 948 filled posts in Home Affairs, only 979 are for immigration control, while of the 370 funded vacancies, just 68 are for immigration officers.
This leaves the branch ineffective to adequately monitor the influx of visitors into the country.
The problem is exacerbated by the branch's inadequate information technology system - the Movement Control System - that has to be updated manually once a day at bigger posts to record incoming and outgoing visitors.
"We will soon be evaluating our experience to date with the implementation of the new Immigration Act to
ensure that in practice we realise the intention of opening the front door to our country more widely and closing the back door more tightly."
Source: BuaNews
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