Home Affairs work permit issue drags on

There is still no satisfactory conclusion to the Department of Home Affairs’(DHA’s) continued inability to process work permit applications within its previously promised 30-day deadline. A legal letter of demand sent to DHA on August 6 from 12 immigration companies – members of the Forum of Immigration Practitioners (Fipsa) – contained a list of 967 applications that had been with DHA for over 30 days. It set a deadline for the department to explain why it could not fulfil its statutory obligation to process work permit and other temporary residence applications within that time span. This was first fixed for August 28, but was then extended to September 1 and again to September 15. However, that final September 15 meeting with the government body still only brought up the sounds of silence, according to Leon Isaacson, MD of Global Migration and chairman of Fipsa. “There has been very little tangible progress on this issue,” he told FTW, “as Home Affairs seems to lack the staff capacity and systems at the new processing centre in Pretoria to deal with the volume of applications being submitted for adjudication.” Many of these applications have been with the DHA for as long as nine months, Isaacson added, but with an average of four to six months.