Home affairs must deliver

This content is for subscribers only. To subscribe, Click Here. Or Sign In

[membership level=”1,2″

The only shocking part of that revelation is that it is coming from a minister of a government that promised to deliver basic services like passports and IDs.

They promised that this was not going to happen but the list of services this government is failing to deliver is now embarrassingly long.

We find it disappointing that it had to take some pointed questions from a committee for the public to get that obvious and simple explanation from the minister.

The ministry should have made that announcement without prodding. It’s simple public relations.

Equally puzzling is why this crisis was not raised when the MPs were discussing the Ministry of Home Affairs’ budget for this year. The MPs knew of this problem months ago but none seems to have remembered to forcefully push for the ministry to be allocated enough funds to produce IDs and passports.

There are no surprises when it comes to passports and IDs because those numbers can be easily predicted. The ministry can easily estimate how many people will need to renew their passports and IDs in the next few months.

Both can be predicted to the date.

The government cannot therefore claim that it underestimated the budget allocation or there has been some unexpected surge in applications and renewals.

The fact is that it just didn’t prioritise the production of IDs and passports. This crisis is therefore self-inflicted.

But the other reason for the ID and passport crisis was buried somewhere in the minister’s testimony.

He said after struggling with the middleman the ministry went straight to the manufacturer of the passports.

That direct interaction was supposed to make business easier and quicker but there was another problem.

The minister said the manufacturer rejected the government’s letter of credit and demanded cash upfront.

The company was not being unreasonable because the Lesotho government is notorious for not paying suppliers. The treatment that the Ministry of Home Affairs is getting from international suppliers is the deserved harvest of a terrible reputation earned over the years.

We cannot get favourable payment terms or use letters of credit to do business with international companies because we cannot be trusted.

We have squandered our goodwill and we are now being treated like a rogue country that should not be treated according to international business practices.

We believe the reputation can be regained and money can be found.

But those are not the ultimate solutions. We believe the government could be wasting a crisis. This might be the opportunity to move to a digital ID. Gradually phase out the physical ID by encouraging those with smartphones to use digital ones.

Perhaps it is also time to increase the passport fees.

Surely M130 is not a fair fee for a passport. It also explains why some people deliberately lose their passports when they have overstayed in South Africa. They know they can easily afford a new one.

We are not saying the government should not subsidise passports but that the public should pay its fair share. Maintaining the current fees doesn’t help the public or the government.

The fact that many are willing to pay more for their passport is proven by the large number of people paying M630 for an emergency passport.

It is also common knowledge that many people are paying a premium through bribes. The solution is to set the right fee to raise enough to produce passports and force people to value them.