Before 8am (opening time), people in the long queue have been issued with the full complement of numbers for the day. How do the officials know at that stage how fast the queue will move? These people stand outside for hours on end and near 4pm (closing time) are often turned away because the computers have supposedly gone offline (on an intranet?).
I am a senior citizen, a 72-year-old woman, and it would be risky for me to arrive long before shops and businesses have opened as I have to walk alone from the parking area carrying several hundred rand in cash. Although I have arrived numerous times before 8am at all three of the above offices, I have been too late to be given a number.
Telephones in all the above offices are NEVER answered, so I cannot contact anyone to advise me on my problem, which is that I urgently require the reissue/renewal of my passport in time for departure. I am sneered at by officials when I arrive at the offices and mention this, and I have been told that there is no case deserving priority.
The problem is that smart ID and passport applicants are delegated to the same queue. Surely some kind of priority should be recognised and dealt with? Surely separate queues would sort this out. Surely by now Home Affairs should have recognised there is a problem? People are having to take time off from work and travel kilometres, all for nothing, and if lucky enough to be accepted into a queue, wait in line for hours.
What am I to do? Time is running out. I am a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen and I need a travel document.
* WE Lombard, Eversdal
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
Cape Argus