Home affairs goes hi-tech at refugee centre to cut corruption

Source: ANA, 11/09/2016

Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba on Sunday toured the revamped and
technologically advanced Marabastad Refugee Reception Centre, west of
Pretoria.

Gigaba said with the technological advancement his department hoped to
curtail corruption at the facility which had previously been widely
reported in the media.

"We hope to complete this process by the end of October so that we can
open up this new revamped office which will now be paperless. The
services are going to be streamlined… we have put a number of
operation managers on the ground so that we assist in the flood of
[asylum seeker] applications," Gigaba told reporters inside the centre.

"We`re introducing an online booking system for people to come and be
captured, then see the refugee status determination officers. If for
some reason the decision on the application has not been made, or they
[asylum seekers] have appealed, we have made the extensions of their
asylum seeker permits to be paperless so that people can self-extend
using kiosks which we are going to roll-out throughout the
country."


Under the new regulations, asylum seekers register for an appointment
at automated machines which also captures their fingerprints and other
details.


Appointment dates with home affairs officials are issued via the
machines and only the asylum seekers scheduled for interviews with the
officials will be let in, using their fingerprints for access.


"To start with, there isn`t going to be queues outside the
centre.

Anybody who enters this centre will only do so on
the basis of an online booking which means that your fingerprints were
already captured. If you are coming to make a booking at the centre,
you make your booking and exit without entering the centre," said
Gigaba.


"If you have been provided with an interview day and for capturing of
your bio data, you will now rely on your fingerprints to access all
the sections. If you don`t have your fingerprints captured, you are
not going to have access to the center… and there is no official going
to be able to assist you. The process of making online bookings is
going to exclude anybody from within the department who could assist
you gain access into the centre as [happened] in the past," he said.



"Now you can only come to the centre when your date and time for an
interview has been set. So there isn`t going to be anybody just
standing outside hoping for some luck to enter this centre. Whatever
other criminal outside there is not going to be able to assist you."
Currently, throngs of foreign nationals gather outside the refugee
reception centre and at times there is pandemonium as they jostle to
access the home affairs offices.


Incidents of crime, particularly theft, are common in the area despite
the presence of several home affairs security guards and police
officers patrolling the area.


Several immigrants, some with young children, sleep outside the centre
hoping to regularise their stay in their country of refuge.


Gigaba hoped that the new interventions would usher in a new era of
efficient, corruption-free service to the millions of asylum seekers
who now call South Africa home.


Flanked by several top departmental officials, including director
general Mkuseli Apleni, deputy director general for immigration
services Jackie McKay, chief director for asylum seeker management
Mandla Madumisa, and operations manager at the Pretoria facility
Macanda Mthetho, Gigaba was positive about improved service delivery.