‘ Use Home Affairs service centres within your areas’
MBABANE – People need to use Home Affairs service centres within their areas to prevent long queues.
According to the Deputy National Civil Registrar, Russel Nxumalo, Eswatini had 11 service centres spread across the country.
Two are currently not operating which are t he Siphofaneni branch that was burnt during the violent protests as well as the Sihlutse service centre which i s currently short of equipment needed to operate.
Nxumalo said the biggest problem was that some people left the areas they lived in and travelled to Mbabane t o do t hei r i denti t y c a r ds or certificates.
Caused
He said these were the people who normally caused the long queues.
He s a i d peopl e knew where t he Home Affairs Offices were in their d i f f e r e n t a r e a s b u t t h e Mbaban e Branch became a detour f or most of them.
“Some people come t o Mbabane f o r o t h e r r e a s o n s a n d when t h e y get t here t hey t hen remember t hat they might as well do their identity documents s i nce t hey are al r eady here,” he said.
He said no matter where the citi zens may go, f or assi s t ance t hey wou l d s t i l l b e a s k e d whe r e t h e y come f r om or which constituency they were from.
He mentioned t hat s ome people randomly j oined t he queues at t he service centres in Mbabane without finding out if that was actually the
r i g h t d a y f o r identity cards.
“People have this belief that if they come to Mbabane from, for instance,
t a k i n g p i c t u r e s
f o r
Nhlangano they will recieve better service which is wrong as we offer the same service in all our centres,” he said.
He added t hat most of t he t i me, people used the Home Affairs Offices because they had come to Mbabane or Manzini and not because they had gone there strictly for their identity cards or certificates.
He a d d e d t h a t t h e r e was a l s o a production unit in Mbabane which c a t e r e d f or t he pr oduct i on of t he cards.
“All our service centres are able to take photos and the only one that does not is the one in Mbabane, but ironically people still decide to rush to Mbabane where they will have to walk to a different area to take the photo,” said Nxumalo.
According t o Nxumalo, offi cers had t o visi t t he production centre every day where they then have to sort the people and send them to the different centres across the country.
Highlighted
Also, he highlighted that there was no way clients could expect to take a photo for t heir i dentity card and receive it the same day as there is a long list of people they service.
“There is a large number of identity cards that are produced in a day and t he f a c t t hat t hey s t i l l need t o be sorted makes things more difficult s o people need t o be pati ent with us,” he s ai d. He s ai d t his was t he reason they decided to have specific days for people to take identity card photos which was Tuesday.
“I magine i f a l l 5 0 p e o p l e i n a l l 11 service stations expected all the cards and other services to be ready at the same time? The machinery and production unit would not be able to handle all the pressure,” he said.
In a brief interview with some of the members of the public found at t he Mbabane s er vi ce centre, t hey said t hey f elt t hat t he service was too slow.
They decried t hat t hey had e l l e d l o n g d i s t a n c e s t o g e t documents done. t r avt h e i r