THE Home Affairs department is considering opening offices on weekends to assist voters.
Deputy minister Njabulo Nzuza told the portfolio committee on Home Affairs on Tuesday, 21 November, that the only issue would be labour related.
“We don't open almost every Saturday, but we did run into issues with labour. We would continue pursuing that option to make sure that offices are open. We will find a way of maintaining the modalities that have to do with us opening on Saturdays,” he said.
Nzuza said his department would continue to run the media campaigns to inform the public about what they are doing.
He said they will soon be making “groundbreaking announcement” about naturalised citizens.
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“There's nothing standing on our way from issuing the smart ID cards to naturalised citizens,” he said.
Nzuza reported that more than 20 000 people visiting offices over the weekend, with plans to address the backlog of 135 000 uncollected IDs.
“Over the weekend, we had about 20 350 people who came in to visit our offices. We issued about 9 312 clients who came to collect their smart ID cards as well as 8 832 who came in to apply for smart ID cards and 842 who came to collect their green barcoded ID books and 993 clients were issued with temporary identification certificates,” he said.
Nzuza complained that in Gauteng, they experienced delays of about three hours in their offices because the State Information & Technology Agency (Sita) ignored their call not to do updates on their systems.
He said Sita was informed not to carry out the updates since it was voter registration weekend because they interfere with capability.
The department's deputy director general, Thomas Sigama, said 295 offices were open on Saturday and 284 on Sunday across Mzansi.
He said the main drive was to make sure that people collected about 135 000 IDs that are lying in their offices.
