The Director-General of Home Affairs‚ Mkhuseli Apleni‚ has admitted that his department is not communicating effectively to ensure that the public understands how to make better use of its services.

On Wednesday‚ Apleni took his time speaking to people queuing in the Home Affairs office in Centurion who complained about waiting for six hours before getting help and crowding at the facility.

Other people complained that there was no facility at the offices for mothers who come with babies and also contended that mothers and the elderly should be prioritised in the queues.

There were also complaints that staff at the offices were not quick to inform people waiting outside that they would not be helped the same day.

“I picked up the other point which I think is important where the clients were blaming us for our communication. They said we don’t communicate. They asked why are we not communicating. If we were communicating these things‚ we would be understanding them but we are not. So it is something that I take‚” Apleni told TimesLIVE after interacting with the people.

He was at the Centurion offices to announce to the public that the green barcoded ID document was still valid and had no expiry date.

Apleni said there had been rumours that the green barcoded ID would be terminated on March 31 2018. This led to a lot of people rushing to Home Affairs offices to get the new smart ID card.

Apleni told journalists that there was limited capacity to issue smart ID cards since they were introduced in 2013. Therefore‚ the green barcoded ID would not expire until the department said so.

After listening to people’s complaints‚ Apleni said: “I think the problem is two-fold. The first one is that as Home Affairs we don’t have offices which have got a full capacity to service the number of clientele which we have. As a result of that‚ because we do not have an appointment system‚ people can rock up in higher numbers than the capacity that we have.”

But he also got a shock when he learned that some of the people in the queue were pupils doing Grade 12 who had been told to get their IDs by the end of February.

“I picked up that the Department of Basic Education is saying to the kids that for you to register for matric you must have your ID by February. But that has not been communicated to us so that we sit and say what plans can we put in place in order to make sure that these kids are assisted. This could be a dedicated line at the office for the kids but we did not know about this‚” he said.

Apleni said the department would do everything it could to deal with the issues raised by the public on the services provided by its offices.