A close associate told a story
recently about his experience of dealing with the Department of Home Affairs in
South Africa. At the time, the Government had recently announced that it would
revise the system of issuing visas to foreign visitors, a system which has cost
the tourism industry in the country many millions, due to potential tourists
from abroad losing interest in the face of unrealistic demands and, probably,
surly behavior by visa officials. The Minister had, over two years, refused to
listen to reasonable information supplied by the many citizens who are both less
arrogant and more attuned to the needs of the world outside the comfortable
Parliamentary offices and the close friendship of their Cabinet colleagues, all
of whom have applied their expertise to the destruction of the South African
economy while extracting huge personal wealth from it. The story he told was
typical of the experience of many citizens in their dealings with Government,
so I requested that he write it for me. This is his story.
Recently, I visited the local office of the Department of Home Affairs
to apply for a renewal of my passport. The last time I did this was in London,
at the South African embassy, where the process took about two weeks after the
obligatory wait on the telephone, at a fee of £1 per minute for a 45 minute
wait to make the appointment. This time, believing the message of a ‘war on
queues’ posted prominently outside the office, I went in.
The process to discover the system was lengthy, with the apparent
security man at the front desk referring me to the woman sitting next to him,
after a wait of about five minutes. The woman was both surly and uncooperative,
but, eventually, she instructed me to ‘sit over there’. There was no apparent
method of determine what my position was in the queue, but, after a wait of
about half an hour, I was instructed by one of the four women at the desk to
take a seat. I gave up my identity document and provided the information
requested, including my Identity Number and my date of birth. Apparently, the
Department of Home Affairs is not aware of the fact that the Identity Number
starts with the date of birth!
When the information had been entered into the computer, I was
instructed to press my left thumb on the electronic reader, and then the right
thumb. This had to be repeated eight times, as the computer was apparently
incapable of registering my thumb prints. Once the computer declared itself to
be satisfied, I was directed to a small booth for the electronic photograph to
be taken. That was done, and then I was instructed to repeat the exercise with
the thumb prints and the photograph another five times, before a satisfactory
result was obtained.
At last, I was directed to sit in another queue, to await the pleasure
of yet another woman attendant who demanded the same set of details again, with
yet further thumb prints (only four attempts this time!), before I was informed
that the process had not worked. Back to the thumb prints and photograph lady! This
time, it needed only three attempts to get the photograph right, then back to
the documents lady, who referred me to the Cashier window. That was easy to
find, being next to the large poster that proclaimed proudly that ‘We are
accepting credit card payments’ (sic). It came as no great surprise that the
credit card payment system was not working, but, fortunately, I had sufficient
cash, an unusual event in this time of the cashless society.
After the Cashier had handed me a receipt, I was directed to sit again,
to await the documents lady. The wait was no more than ten minutes this time,
and I was instructed to give my thumb prints again! After the sixth attempt,
the computer apparently decided that I was me, and allowed the formal
application to be made, and then permitted the documents lady to release me
into the open air again. The process had taken about two hours on a
not-very-busy day.
Twelve days later, I received an SMS from the Department of Home
Affairs to inform me that my new passport was available for collection from the
local office.
The next day, I drove the 25 kilometers to the office in great
excitement. I could collect m passport!
The excitement was doused when I arrived there, to see about fifty
people sitting and standing outside the office. I managed to make my way
through the crowd to the reception desk, where I went through the same process
again of waiting for the uniformed man to demand my Identity Document. He did
this three times before he heard me informing him that I was there to collect a
renewed passport, when he felt that it was safe to refer me to his companion,
the same surly lady as before, sitting next to him. The wait was somewhat
longer this time, until the woman listened to my explanation, after demanding
to see my Identity Document. She then informed me that ‘the system is down’. I
asked when it would be up again, and she shrugged her shoulders before saying
that it would probably be no sooner than late in the afternoon. I decided to
come back the next time I was in the town, on Friday, two days later.
I did that, repeating the whole exercise of making my way through the
crowd, giving m Identity Document twice and receiving the same answer. When I
asked when the system was likely to be up, the response was a shrug of the
shoulders.
I repeated the exercise on the following Friday, arriving shortly after
midday, and, lo and behold, the system was up. After my details were entered in
a register, I was directed to sit outside, where I would be called. I asked how
long it would take, as I have health problems that do not lend themselves to
lengthy immobility, and was told ‘about an hour’. I waited outside for an hour
and a half before I saw a man standing at the other end of the crowd of about
fifty people, holding a sheaf of papers and passports. It was impossible to
hear him above the sound of the passing cars, so I approached and tried to hear
if I were being called. No luck! After listening to him for a further ten
minutes, my name had still not been called, and the man returned to the
airconditioned interior of the office. I followed him and made my way directly
to the surly woman at the reception desk. She apparently was offended that I
had not made my approach through the uniformed man who would refer me to her,
but, after I explained several times that I desired to know how long the
further wait would be, she told me that I had to register to be able to have
any hope of collecting my passport. I informed her that I had done so, nearly
two hours ago. She demanded to see my Identity Document, and satisfied herself
that I had, in fact, registered one page of the register earlier. She then
informed me that they were very busy (I had noticed that the waiting area was
full, with at least another forty people sitting outside, and used my failing
mental capability to deduce that they were actually busy!) I asked, politely,
what the system was, so that I could make an assessment of whether it was worth
waiting any longer. She replied angrily that I must wait my turn. I replied
that I had no objection to taking my place in the queue, provided that I knew
where that place was. She replied angrily that I could not expect preferential
treatment. Sensing that the discussion would not provide the information I was
seeking, I asked to see the Manager. The angry lady refused to tell me where I
could find the Manager, but, after I demanded another two times to see the
Manager, informing her that I had a right to proper treatment, she referred me
to the lady at Counter 3. When I asked who that person might be, I was informed
that she was the Supervisor.
Now confident that I might be able to obtain information on how a
waiting time of ‘about one hour’ could have morphed into more than two hours
without hope of resolution, I waited politely at Counter 3 for the person being
served to finish her business, and then asked what the system was to collect my
renewed passport.
The Supervisor clearly did not like my looks (I am White, male and 75
years old) or the question, and she told me to take a seat and wait my turn. I
informed her that I had no desire to be treated in a preferential way, but
requested again to be told what the system was, so that I could understand what
the likely waiting time would be. The Supervisor then demanded to see my
number. I informed her that I had not been given a number, commenting that the
lack of a number might explain why my presence was being ignored. The
Supervisor then instructed me to return to the reception desk to register. I
informed her, again, that I had done so, two hours earlier. She then told me in
a very officious tone that she could not give me any preference. I gathered
that she either could not explain the system to me, or did not wish to do so,
and I requested that I be referred to the Manager. The Supervisor informed me
some ten minutes later that the Manager was not there. I asked her to provide
his name, and she referred me to the poster outside the office for a national
complaints number. I told her that I had no interest in what the poster said,
as I had already experienced twice the inaccuracy of the Home Affairs posters
(‘war on queues’ and ‘we are accepting credit cards’), and demanded that I be
given the name of the Manager, noting that, as a taxpayer, I was entitled to
correct and complete information. She mumbled a name in a barely audible tone,
and I requested that she write the name and the telephone number on a piece of
paper. She replied that she did not have any paper! By now, my powers of
patience and credulity were stretched to breaking point, but I managed to find
some paper and asked for a pen. I was told that the Supervisor did not have a
pen. I asked her what the object was that she held in her hand. (I suspected
that it was a pen, as she had been using it to write only a few minutes
earlier!) Fortunately, another person handed me a pen, and I managed to obtain
the information needed and to write it down.
I then informed the Supervisor that I would take my place in the queue,
wherever that might be, and await my turn to collect my renewed passport.
To cut a long story short, I was finally called to collect my new
passport at 16h19 (four hours and twelve minutes after I joined the first queue
that day, and sixteen days after I had been informed that I could collect it). The
process at the counter required only three attempts at thumb prints before I
was free o go with my new passport. I noticed that I was the last but two to be
called to collect my passport, even though I had seen that I was at least a
full page before the last entry in the register!
As an aside. I noticed during the long wait that a large bag had been
left unattended in the waiting area for more than an hour before I was able to
attract the attention of an official to inform him of the obvious risk it
posed. (I had seen in airports and official offices throughout Europe, the
United Kingdom and the United States that officials are particularly sensitive
to the potential bomb threat posed by unattended large bags in public areas.)
Apparently, the Department of Home Affairs does not consider itself to be
vulnerable to such a threat, or that there is no violent criminality in the
country. (Many foreigners who have been subjected to xenophobic attacks,
residents of poorly-serviced areas, women and children might dispute that
belief.)
What are the conclusions that I, as a Management Consultant with 27
years experience in fifteen countries in the diagnosis and correction of
problems in organizations of all classes draw from this experience? The
following points seem to be relevant:
- The Department of Home Affairs has
inadequate systems to handle the work it is required to do, in terms of:
- Computer systems
- Staff training
- Operational systems
- The staff, at least at the Komatipoort
office, is:
- Poorly trained
- Unresponsive to the reasonable needs
of the public it supposedly serves
- Inadequate to meet the needs of the
large number of ‘customers’ witnessed at the office on many occasions
- Not willing to provide service to the
‘customers’
- Petty and obstructive in their
treatment of any ‘customer’ they perceive to be unwilling to take their
surly instructions to sit quietly and wait their turn (whenever that might
be), by pushing them to the back of the queue, and making them wait until
the last possible moment for the service for which they have paid.
After my experience at the Department of Home Affairs, I have gained a
much better understanding of the sentiments of citizens who burn schools and
stone passing cars in order to gain the attention to their needs and rights. If
there had been a school nearby, I might even have been tempted to set fire to
it.
