Home affairs coming to east mall soon
The Pretoria mall will be the first to operate before the service is made available at other big malls such as Cresta, Southgate, The Pavillion and Tygervalley.
Residents could as soon as the end of the week be obtaining their passports and IDs from the new Home Affairs office at Menlyn mall.
This was according to Home Affairs spokesperson Siya Qoza, who said the office was in the final stages of readiness.
“All that is left is the delivery of chairs for clients and the testing of the network. Barring any eventualities, we expect that this will be completed by the end of the week.”
Recently Home Affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi announced that various malls across the country would soon house its offices including Cresta and Southgate in Johannesburg, The Pavillion in eThekwini and Tygervalley in Cape Town.
The minister made the announcement in his 2022/23 budget vote.
Qoza said if an agreement was reached with all the other malls, construction would commence.
He said his department awaited Menlyn mall to become operational before concluding agreements with the other malls.
“This is done to assure ourselves that the model works well before we take to other malls.”
Qoza said the deal was the department would not pay rent for the first five years.
“This is regarded as a mutually beneficial project for the department and the mall owners.
“We only incur a once-off expenditure for installations that include shopfitting, IT cabling and computer equipment and furniture.”
Home affairs deputy minister Njabulo Nzuza said the department was also making progress in strengthening partnerships with banks in a bid to tackle various challenges.
He said the banks supported the roll-out of smart IDs and machine-readable passports.
He said 28 bank branches had access to home affairs systems that enabled them to process ID and passport applications directly.
Nzuza said the department continued to enhance its technology to include multimodal biometrics like facial recognition because clients needed customised and personalised services to fit their unique needs.
“We have clients with names that have special characters, fingerprints that are damaged by years of physical labour, amputees due to medical or accidents and many other challenges.
“The 2022/2023 budget will see us exploring new ways to better serve citizens. We will procure kiosks that will allow clients to self-service for passports and smart ID applications as well as reprint birth, marriage and death certificates.”
Nzuza said the kiosks would require customers to authenticate themselves through biometrics, and would be in strategic locations to allow for access after office hours and weekends.
“The self-service kiosk will usher a new era in the way we service our clients.
“We are exploring partnerships with more institutions and are in discussions with the post office to extend our services.”
ALSO READ: Lyttelton reservoir scheduled for maintenance
Do you have more information about the story?
Please send us an email to editorial@rekord.co.za or phone us on 083 625 4114.
For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord’s websites: Rekord East
For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram
