THE DEPARTMENT of Home Affairs has extended weekend operations for collecting IDs ahead of the May 29 general elections.

For ID collection services, application facilitation and temporary identity certificate issuance, the Home Affairs offices will be open on Saturdays until May 25 for five hours a day.

Siya Qoza, department spokesperson, said offices will also resolve duplicates, amendments, rectifications and dead-alive cases with the required documentation.

“We invite people who have applied for their IDs, particularly young people who are first applicants, to come to our offices to collect their documents. This initiative gives people more options to collect their enabling documents,” Qoza said.

He further said that the offices will open from 8am to 1pm. Mobile offices are also scheduled to return to deliver IDs in the remote areas where they took applications. Local offices, working with stakeholders that include councillors, will communicate the dates, times and venues of the visits.

“Support will be provided by mobile offices to the local offices identified,” he said.

Qoza said clients can book appointments to collect their smart ID cards and green bar-coded ID books before visiting offices by using the branch appointment booking system (BABS), which is available on the department's website.

ActionSA's Lerato Ngobeni said the department has a backlog regarding the issue of smart card IDs, more so during an election year in which universal suffrage is enshrined within our Constitution.

She said as ActionSA members they are deeply concerned about the inefficiencies.

“The Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, stated in a Parliament in November last year that there are well over 500,000 uncollected ID smart cards nationwide. One of the primary drivers of this staggering figure is system downtime within the department. The structural inefficiencies within the department are a significant cause for concern, no doubt because we are in a seminal election year,” she said.

Lesego Montso

Home Affairs extends operating hours ahead of elections