Cape Town - Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said the newly-launched Branch Appointment Booking System (BABS) was proving to be the solution to the practice of clients who pay persons to queue on their behalf at department offices.
EFF MP Lorato Tito wrote to Motsoaledi asking the status of his publicly proclaimed fight against queues at the department offices across the country.
In his written reply, Motsoaledi said technology measures were being implemented by State Information Technology Agency (SITA) to deal with system downtime.
“SITA is upgrading its network infrastructure for a total of R400 million. They had promised that this work will be completed by next month.”
He said the department was continuing with efforts to improve client experience and it recently launched the Branch Appointment Booking System (BABS) as part of a “War on Queues” efforts.
Motsoaledi said the department had deployed a Counter Corruption Team to hotspots to deal with opportunistic individuals who queue by posing as clients in the early hours of the morning and sell their spots to clients.
“The recently launched Branch Appointment Booking System (BABS) is proving to be the solution that will deter these unscrupulous individuals from infiltrating the queues as only clients with an appointment will be served and thereby eliminating the culture of selling slots.
“BABS has been used by over 117 000 clients since June 2022.”
The minister said they were increasing their footprint by securing office space at selected malls across the country.
“We are of the view that this initiative will provide some relief for clients due to improved queuing conditions (not exposed to uncovered areas), secure parking, adequate ablution facilities and clients will have the convenience of conducting other personal business all under one roof once they have completed their visits to our offices.”
Motsoaledi also said the department has bought 10 extra mobile trucks for R15 million and another 20 for R35 million would be added this financial year.
“We will continue adding more trucks each financial year until we have increased our total tally by 100%, that is from the present 100 trucks to 200 trucks,” he said.
Cape Times