The highly anticipated Home Affairs branch at the Tyger Valley Shopping Centre in Bill Bezuidenhout Avenue has officially opened its doors to help alleviate the queues and heavy strains on neighbouring branches, like the one in Bellville.
The Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Leon Schreiber, was pleased to cut the red ribbon to the new branch located in the banking section of the centre on Monday 7 April.
Schreiber admitted to being inundated with questions about the branch, saying: “It seems to have generated a huge amount of enthusiasm. And so, we are all grateful to be able to today answer those questions by saying that the office is ready to go.”
Residents like Chris Bernardo from Kuils River expressed relief at the opening of the branch in a more secure location, after recently being the target of theft when he visited the Bellville Home Affairs branch.
“I am a preacher at the Dutch Reformed Church and also a wedding officiator that frequents the Bellville office. Last Monday (31 March) I was targeted for theft and my cellphone was stolen. The police already scrapped the case due to lacking evidence. And it’s not even about the cellphone… I also know of at least four other preachers and officiators who have been targeted in Bellville, and we simply no longer feel safe to go there,” Bernardo shared with TygerBurger.
Bookings-only
This new branch was created for the mission to alleviate the pressure on the Bellville Home Affairs office. “We know that Bellville is a medium-sized office, but really a very busy facility, and this is going to help lighten the load.
“I do want to emphasise that this is a booking-only facility,” the minister said, ensuring that there are no queues. The office served its first clients in the presence of the minister shortly after proceedings ended.
Slots opened at 13:00 sharp for bookings of appointments to this new bookings-only facility. The new Tygervalley office features upgraded technology that integrates a camera at the counter, eliminating the need to queue for photos.
Malose Kekana, CEO of the Pareto Limited group, of which the Tyger Valley Shopping Centre is a part, acknowledged the community’s excitement for Monday’s grand opening: “There was a lot of excitement within our Tyger Valley, Bellville and greater Durbanville community. And I think a lot of people will be very, very happy.”
‘Improving customer experience’
Kekana also spoke to the business perspective of the customer experience, especially considering elderly citizens.
“There is nothing in a customer’s experience like queueing. To me, this is only one of the achievements through the minister’s efforts, like innovating and integrating technology systems, to solve one problem – which is increasing efficiency so that you can handle higher quantities quickly. This has our full support in this direction leading the office that will make sure that banks, through this kind of offices, online services, et cetera, can reduce queueing.”
The Tygervalley branch is only one accomplishment of a wider integration plan to alleviate bums on seats at branches. The minister continued to emphasise their drive to push more support through the department’s online bookings and applications, including partnering bank branches, nationwide.
However, the minister was asked about the prevalent threat of offline systems still delaying applications and issuing official documentation. Schreiber noted two great challenges affecting broader home affairs systems, but also to “watch this space”.
“The one is our own internal systems and the things we control, and that’s where we are starting to see the fruits now, literally, within the last few days. The second part relates to the State Information Technology Agency (Sita), where there are some elements of connectivity that would fall under Sita’s domain, not Home Affairs’. With this, we are really excited for the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies to come with a solution in the coming weeks.”
New Home Affairs website
Among the improvements to look forward to, is a new and improved Home Affairs website.
“But first, our focus is to improve what we do have, which is our systems, staff allocations and resources. Once this has been largely accomplished can we really start focusing on an improved website and additional resources to equip people to use it effectively,” added Schreiber.
