The closure of the Crown Mines refugee reception office last week has inconvenienced asylum seekers and vendors who now have to travel to the Tshwane offices at great cost.
This week the Pretoria News spoke to some migrants outside the Tshwane Events Centre who had been forced to travel from Joburg after finding out that the offices had been closed.
They said they arrived to locked gates and were panicking at the possibility of having to travel to Pretoria again if they did not get their documents during the visit.
“I left home just after six this morning (Monday) with the hope that I would put my application through and go back to work sometime during the day,” said Jacques Mulemba from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Mulemba and thousands of other foreigners were forced to make the 140km round trip to Pretoria to lodge their applications or renew their permits to remain in the country after the Crown Mines offices closed on June 1.
Last month the Department of Home Affairs announced its decision to “relocate and transfer” the Crown Mines refugee reception centre from Joburg to Pretoria, raising complaints and fears that many people could not afford the costs and time needed to travel between the two cities.
South Africa has the world’s largest number of registered asylum seekers, most of them Zimbabweans, with Joburg bearing the brunt of the (pressure caused by the) majority of last year’s 264 000 registered migrants.
Some said they faced huge financial and other personal costs, and also risked losing their jobs because of the move.
Egyptian Keale Madoe, who had brought his brother Madoe Madoe to apply for an asylum seeker’s permit, said he had to leave his business unattended and bring his brother, who was new in town, to Pretoria.
He said: “Had I known of the closure I would have made arrangements to ensure that my business did not suffer.”
Some of the asylum seekers said they had spent no less than R70 to get to the Tshwane offices.
“This can easily go up to R100 if you don’t know the place, because you hop onto one taxi and then another until someone points you in the right direction,” Togo Lemusi, a Pakistani, said.
Vendors, who had also made the trek to Pretoria from the defunct Crown Mines refugee offices, said they had to leave home very early to catch the early-morning migrants.
One vendor from Yeoville who declined to be named said: “I’m up at 3.30am and in Joburg just after 5am to be here (in Pretoria) before 7am when the queues are really long.”
The vendor, who sells passport covers, cooldrinks, pens and cigarettes, said he was not making the kind of money he made in Joburg.
This on top of an increased taxi fare, from R36 to R80 a day, he said.
“I am not even making half of what I made per day. I have basically lost my livelihood,” he said.
According to the Department of Home Affairs’ deputy director-general Jackie McKay, the department had no choice but to relocate to Pretoria after a court order was granted to that effect.
McKay said: “The issues around applicants not being able to travel that far, and that they might not be able to find the time to, were raised in court but the court order went ahead anyway.”
He said there were no problems anticipated, nor were there fears that files would be lost along the way. “A similar operation was successfully done in Cape Town so this has been well planned. Capacity has been increased and Crown Mines staff have been moved to Pretoria, and we also have electronic files for everyone,” he said.
He said there would be no backlogs or delays in the processing of applications. – Pretoria News