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Date
: 27/02/2006
Source: Department of Home Affairs
Title: Mapisa-Nqakula: Breakfast hosted for immigration officers
deployed at JIA
Speech by Hon NN Mapisa Nqakula, RSA Minister of Home Affairs on
the occasion of a breakfast hosted for immigration officer deployed
at the JIA
Programme Director
Colleagues
Members of the Media
Friends!
I am happy to welcome you all to this function this morning. The
reason for which we meet is very important and quite integral to
the success of our immigration work at the Johannesburg
International Airport as well other Ports of Entry. At the time of
my appointment as Minister of Home Affairs, I was already concerned
about the capacity problems, both in terms of infrastructure as
well as human resources within the department. I had no doubt in my
mind that if we were to succeed in turning this department around,
one of the key issues we would need to address, would be that of
ensuring adequate capacity for Home Affairs.
Over the past two years we have concentrated on this aspect of our
work and this has resulted in some visible progress. We have moved
with speed to alleviate the problems of lack of leadership in all
spheres of our work, we have reviewed our organisational
establishment and changed it drastically and have recruited much of
the scarce skills that are paramount to the success of our
programme.
We are meeting here to continue on the same path. I am sure that
many of us gathered here this morning might have heard or might
have a real experience of congestions and delays at the
Johannesburg International Airport while travelling
internationally. Some of these delays have had major implications
both for our economy and for our state security. In part, these
inconveniences had been as a result of inadequacy in the capacity
of our immigration services.
The Johannesburg International Airport is a key economic and
security installation in our country and it is important that it is
run and managed in a manner that does not compromise the country in
terms of these two aspects.
Many of our comprehensive programmes for the transformation of the
immigration services are in the long term, and may not bring
immediate relief to this kind of problem now in the short to medium
term. We have, therefore decided that there is a need for a direct
and practical intervention immediately to try and resolve this
problem.
Today, we are going to be deploying an additional 40 immigration
officers that will augment the current teams that are already
operating at the Johannesburg and the Cape Town International
Airports. These are new recruits that have just emerged from our
training processes in which we have introduced a new curriculum
that runs over a period of a year.
These 40 officials are the first step in our rescue package for
building capacity for the immigration services at these
airports.
We are indeed aware that the problems of immigration at the
airports are not only limited to capacity issues or the number of
officials deployed. Some of the major problems have to do with
leadership issues as well as general lack of work ethic. Some of
these leadership and management problems have also resulted in our
inability to optimally utilize resources we have, albeit limited,
to achieve the best efficiency levels possible. At a more serious
level, we also encountered a number of problems emanating from
corrupt behaviour of our own officials and of those they collude
with in the public and amongst other agencies operating at the
airport.
Our Border Control Strategy that we are working on, in consultation
with other relevant departments and role players will address these
issues as they relate to all ports of entry, as well as the
specific plans for the Johannesburg International Airport. The
strategy is been develop under the auspices of the BCOCC, which is
currently chaired by the department of Home Affairs. We shall make
further pronouncements in this regard once the strategy is
ready.
In so far as the current deployments at the Airport are concerned,
it is important that we put in place certain stop-gap measures to
deal with the limitations that we have in terms of human
resources.
Through these new deployments we want to increase the number of
people that are available at the counters in every shift and in
every team. We are currently working on a maximum shift of 14
people per shift at our departure section. This comes down to an
average of 10 people per shift outside peak hours. Through this
deployment, we shall be able to increase this to 23, which is the
total number of counters available for immigration officer to do
their work at any given time.
The shifts at the arrivals section currently have 18 officials when
operating at a maximum capacity. This number goes down to 15
outside peak hours, and we want to increase the full capacity to
42, in the short term while aiming to fill all the 58 available
counters in the near future.
These shifts and the number of officials deployed will obviously
differ based on the demand and the volumes of traffic from one
shift to another.
Inline with the new shift system that we are adopting, peak hours
will no longer be fixed in terms of times, but we shall ensure that
they are based on weekly projections of scheduled flights provided
by the Airports Company of South Africa. In addition, we shall also
increase the overnight complement for staff deployed for overnight
duty from the current 10 to 14. This will ensure that any flight
that arrives outside the normal peak hours with a high volume of
passengers can also be cleared at immigration without inconvenience
to the passengers.
I must also announce that we are in the process of strengthening
our management structures to administer immigration at the JIA. In
due course we shall appoint three managers at the level of
directors who are going to be responsible for overall management of
immigration services at the Airport. They will also have a fully
capacitated management team that operates under them, and there
will always be one of them available at the airport at any
time.
We are indeed grateful for the cooperation we are receiving from
other stakeholders at the airport and the support they have given
for these efforts. In addition to Airports Company South Africa
(ACSA), I must also thank the Board of Airline Representatives with
whom I met last week to address similar issues. I am also glad that
they have undertaken to help us with customer relations training
for our officials. This one of the areas of training that we have
recognized as key for every official of the department, and we
appreciate that we can do in partnership with other stakeholders at
the JIA.
This rescue package shall also include the installation of
additional computers at the counters that are currently not in use.
We intend to ensure that every counter allocated to us should have
a computer and an immigration officer.
We have committed ourselves to the transformation of our
immigration services in order to establish a service that promotes
the underlying objectives of our immigration policy. These
objectives include the proper regulation of the movement of people,
attraction of skills, boost to our tourism, increased levels of
interaction with other nations and of course to ensure the security
of our country and all its people. Our efforts at improving our
admissions capacity will ensure that this is done in manner that is
convenient to all involved.
We can never over emphasize the importance of the work that you are
all going to do once you are at the airport. This work comes with
great responsibility and there shall not be any tolerance for
sloppiness, for inefficiencies and for lack of professional work
ethic. Any mishaps that we cause in our functions at that level can
have far reaching consequences for our country. There shall be no
room for corrupt activity. This is a cancer on which we have
declared war, and if you have been following our recent success in
this regard, you will know that it is no longer business as
usual.
Each one of you is saddled with a huge responsibility, I don't envy
you. I am sure you would not have been selected if you were not
found to be suitable.
You will do us proud, and I wish you all the success.
Map
