Latest news with #SiyaQoza
The Herald
08-07-2025
- The Herald
Extended hours at home affairs offices during school holidays
Home affairs offices will be open until 6pm on weekdays until July 21. Department spokesperson Siya Qoza said the two-hour extension in operating hours is to assist people, including pupils, who want to apply for and collect their IDs during the school holidays. To reduce queues, appointments before visiting offices can be booked on the department's website. Home affairs has also introduced dedicated counters for collections in large offices that process smart ID Cards and passports, where space allows. People who have been waiting three weeks or more for their ID cards are encouraged to visit their home affairs offices to check if their cards are ready for collection. TimesLIVE
TimesLIVE
08-07-2025
- TimesLIVE
Extended hours at home affairs offices during school holidays
Home affairs offices will be open until 6pm on weekdays until July 21. Department spokesperson Siya Qoza said the two-hour extension in operating hours is to assist people, including pupils, who want to apply for and collect their IDs during the school holidays. To reduce queues, appointments before visiting offices can be booked on the department's website. Home affairs has also introduced dedicated counters for collections in large offices that process smart ID Cards and passports, where space allows. People who have been waiting three weeks or more for their ID cards are encouraged to visit their home affairs offices to check if their cards are ready for collection.
IOL News
07-07-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
Get your ID this holiday: Home Affairs extends hours for learners
Home Affairs extends weekday operating hours to 6pm to help learners and other clients collect their IDs during the school holidays. The Department of Home Affairs has announced that all offices will extend their operating hours by two hours daily from Monday until July 21. During this period, offices will close at 6pm instead of 4pm on weekdays, giving learners and other clients more time to apply for and collect their identification documents during the school holidays. A spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs, Siya Qoza, says the Department has also introduced dedicated counters for collections in larger offices that process Smart ID Cards and passports, where space permits.
The Herald
24-06-2025
- Business
- The Herald
This home affairs service will no longer cost 15c
While the price of everything else increases, government has seemingly recently remembered to raise the price of one of its services from cents to rands. Home Affairs said this week it is "correcting the unsustainable under-pricing of its verification service". For more than a decade, banks and financial service providers have paid 15c for real-time verifications against the National Population Register (NPR). This allows the registered users to check identities and other biographical information of their clients against the home affairs database. Department spokesperson Siya Qoza said this is below market-related rates charged by the private sector for comparable services and far below the cost to the state of providing the online verification service, which deprived home affairs of the resources required to maintain the NPR. "Extreme under-pricing has led to profiteering and abuses by some users that overwhelm the NPR and cause failure rates in excess of 50%, contributing to 'system offline' failures at home affairs offices." After initiating substantial upgrades to the service, home affairs on Monday gazetted a new price structure. This sets the price for real-time verifications during peak hours at R10 per request. An option for users to do "non-live batch verifications" during off-peak hours is being introduced at a cost of R1. The updated system's failure rate has been reduced to below 1%, according to the department. It will be in effect from July 1. TimesLIVE
TimesLIVE
24-06-2025
- Business
- TimesLIVE
This home affairs service will no longer cost 15c
While the price of everything else increases, government has seemingly recently remembered to raise the price of one of its services from cents to rands. Home Affairs said this week it is "correcting the unsustainable under-pricing of its verification service". For more than a decade, banks and financial service providers have paid 15c for real-time verifications against the National Population Register (NPR). This allows the registered users to check identities and other biographical information of their clients against the home affairs database. Department spokesperson Siya Qoza said this is below market-related rates charged by the private sector for comparable services and far below the cost to the state of providing the online verification service, which deprived home affairs of the resources required to maintain the NPR. "Extreme under-pricing has led to profiteering and abuses by some users that overwhelm the NPR and cause failure rates in excess of 50%, contributing to 'system offline' failures at home affairs offices." After initiating substantial upgrades to the service, home affairs on Monday gazetted a new price structure. This sets the price for real-time verifications during peak hours at R10 per request. An option for users to do "non-live batch verifications" during off-peak hours is being introduced at a cost of R1. The updated system's failure rate has been reduced to below 1%, according to the department. It will be in effect from July 1.
