The Democratic Alliance (DA) in KwaZulu-Natal has expressed dismay at the challenges facing over-burdened staff at the Durban Refugee Reception Office and the frustration of asylum-seekers.
The party says Home Affairs countrywide should be overhauled. The Durban Refugee Reception Office deals with large numbers of applications due to the closure of the Cape Town and Port Elizabeth offices.
The DA’s Shadow Minister of Home Affairs, Haniff Hoosen, led a visit to the offices to assess services.
“Immigrants who are supposedly illegal and who want to become legal and regularise themselves – we should have a system in South Africa where Home Affairs makes it as easy as possible for people to regularise themselves because we have a situation in South Africa where even Home Affairs themselves do not know how many millions of undocumented immigrants are in the country and yet when they are documented when foreign nationals who want to register and who want to regularise – then we have a system at Home Affairs that doesn’t make it possible to do so and becomes frustrating and that’s the matter we are going to take it up with urgency in Parliament.”
