Letter: Why shorter hours?

Lorraine Varner of Simbithi writes:

As a very positive person and proud South African I will try my best, especially at an uncertain time like this in our world, to understand inconvenience and frustration due to closure of various government departments.

I do however, have a major issue with the new opening times of our Salt Rock licensing department.

I believe they recently reopened and have been closed for 10 days due to a positive Covid-19 case. I am not quite sure why they need 10 days to sanitise and reopen.

I went down this morning (Friday September 11) at 9.20am and saw the queue. I decided to return later in the day. I went back around 12.30pm and the same scenario.

I decided to rather return after the “normal”, I use that word carefully, lunch time from 1pm – 1.30pm and arrived back at 2.40pm to be told that they closed at 1.30pm.

At first, I thought it was due it being Friday, only to be told that their opening hours are from 8.30am – 1.30pm weekdays.

There is an enormous number of expired licenses and the backlog must be monumental.

Why would you then shorten the hours of opening, limiting the efficiency of catching up?

It makes no sense to make law-abiding citizens, who are trying to do the right thing, queue for long periods when you have fewer hours of productivity.