Pretoria - The Department of Home Affairs has informed President Cyril Ramaphosa that it was finally set to pilot the first public service office in a main shopping centre next month.

The facility will be in the Menlyn Park shopping centre in Pretoria.

Minister Aaron Motsoaledi informed Ramaphosa last week during a debate on the State of the Nation Address about the much-anticipated project which sought to address complaints about long queues and sluggish service at Home Affairs offices.

Members of the home affairs portfolio committee often get irritated when the public complain that they have been waiting for a very long time for an amendment or a rectification on their name or date of birth.

Last year, Motsoaledi announced that they were going to be doing everything in their power to provide the public with multiple platforms to acquire identification and travel documents from the department.

Their wish was to provide multiple platforms to avoid the long queues. One of such platforms was to offer services in the main shopping malls of the country where people do not have to queue, but come and do their shopping while awaiting their turn to be served.

“I am happy to announce that systems and equipment have already been set up at Menlyn Mall in Tshwane and we are ready to roll in the first week of March,” he said.

Annually the department gets about 80 000 people who want to amend their date of birth or spelling of their names or surnames. This included tedious tasks like looking for 80 000 records among 340 million.

Motsoaledi implored Ramaphosa to take DA leader John Steenhuisen with him to the shopping centre when he went to witness the rollout of the pilot project a few weeks from now.

“Immediately after officially opening this Menlyn Mall pilot, we will go to Cresta Mall in Joburg, the Pavillion in eThekwini and Tygervalley in Cape Town. We believe that all of those will be functional before the end of the coming financial year. That means this calendar year,” Motsoaledi said.

“We have been accused of acquiring very expensive space from rich mall owners at a very high cost to the state. I want to mention here that for the next five years, we are not going to pay a single cent for rental because this project is mutualism.”

Pretoria News