SA fixes glitch at Home Affairs

SOUTH Africa’s Home Affairs Department (DHA) has restored its online system, which broke down on Friday following a power outage at the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) that resulted in the disruption of operations at service points countrywide, including Beitbridge Border Post.

The DHA’s acting director-general, Mr Thulani Mavuso, said in a statement on Monday that all systems were back online and operations had returned to normal following the restoration of power supplies.

“Once power was restored at SITA, we commenced with the process of testing affected applications on our systems including the National Population Register, the Home Affairs National Identification System (HANIS) as well as the Live Capture System,” said Mr Mavuso.

“Our technicians have been seized with the enormous task of the restoration of the systems to ensure that by Monday, August 13, 2018, our clients receive the services they require without any interruptions.

“In this regard, we have concluded the testing process and are confident that it will be all systems go on Monday. We wish to apologise sincerely to those affected by the unavailability of certain services on Friday.”

The breakdown in the DHA system resulted in travellers spending more than four hours to enter or leave South Africa through Beitbridge Border Post where there were long queues.

The situation at Beitbridge was also worsened by an increase in human traffic as congregants from the Zion Christian Church (ZCC) travelled for their church conference in Zimbabwe.

Border authorities said on Monday that the situation was manageable and that they expected to clear more people on the exit side over the Heroes and Defence Forces holiday when the congregants returned home.

A total of 15 000 people use Beitbridge Border Post daily and the numbers rise to 30 000 during peak periods.

These numbers include both entries and exits.