Malusi Gigaba, Minister of Home Affairs, on 19 October 2016 launched his Department’s new contact centre at the head office in Pretoria’s city centre. AfriForum welcomes this initiative of the Department.

According to the Department, the new contact centre is a huge improvement on the previous call centre. The public can contact the new contact centre telephonically, via email or by means of the Department’s website. With the previous call centres, the public could only contact the Department telephonically.  

According to Sue-Ann de Wet, AfriForum’s Project Coordinator for South African Diaspora, AfriForum received various complaints from its members. “It is a big frustration for members when call centre consultants sent them from pillar to post with no assistance whatsoever,” says De Wet. Additional complaints received include, amongst others, the following: unanswered calls, insufficient tracing of enquiries and record keeping, poor coordination between officials as well as poor handling of enquiries.

The Department made an undertaking that the new contact centre will ensure better service delivery. It enables the Department to effectively deal with all enquiries, requests for service related information and complaints within a reasonable timeframe. The contact centre makes use of an integrated database and the operator can immediately see the progress of a specific application in the system.

The Department also wants to expand the current system by means of integrating additional databases to, amongst others, assist asylum seekers. All information of any person who is in the country at any given time will be available immediately. AfriForum will observe the progress of the system with great interest.