Jonny Steinberg is spot on in his assessment of the state of the department of home affairs (The Disgraceful Aim of Home Affairs: To Ruin People’s Lives, April 5). Any interaction with the department turns into an utterly miserable experience for both foreigners and locals. It is hard to understand how the department could have enabled theoretically cutting-edge electronic capturing of most applications for identity documents and passports, yet for the most part getting your hands on the documents still involves hours (at best) or several days of fruitless queuing to submit applications and then again to collect them. A five-minute process in theory turns into a multi-day nightmare, with numbers capped, systems frequently crashing and payment methods never working. One can apply online and go to a “smart office” and yet save no time at all. Several banks were enabled to capture applications a few years ago, but the number of branches has been static since then at less than a dozen a...
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