The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has implemented from 01 March 2015 new opening and closing hours for civic services front offices so as to improve services to clients. This move will also ensure DHA offices have enough staff to attend to all clients professionally.

The decision on new opening and closing hours followed an extensive consultative process with organized labour as well as benchmarking with relevant stakeholders, both internal and external.

The new opening and closing hours will benefit the Department’s clients, managers, staff members and the organization as a whole. Importantly, the new opening and closing hours will afford managers and staff sufficient time to interact with each other on service delivery matters and front office operations.

With the new opening and closing hours, staff members will still work a forty (40) hour week spread over six (6) days, Monday to Saturday; and work only two (2) Saturdays in a month. This also means that the new opening and closing hours will not change the maximum number of hours DHA officials are required to work. All staff will still work 40 hours a week.

Office hours for DHA will be from 07h30 to 16h30, including a 30-minute lunch break. Opening and closing hours for serving clients will be from 08h00 to 16h00.

It was decided that two shifts will be required to ensure successful implementation. The first shift will commence at 07h30 and end at 16h00 (8 hours). The second shift will commence at 09h00 and end at 16h30 (7 hours). Both shifts will include a 30-minute lunch break.

Staff members on the 07h30 to 16h00 shift will work a forty (40) hour week from Monday to Friday whilst those on the 09h00 to 16h30 shift will work thirty five (35) hours from Monday to Friday and five (5) hours on Saturday.

The Saturday shift will commence at 08h00 and end at 13h00 for staff members, and from 08h30 to 12h30 for service to the members of the public.

Staff members will alternate between the two shifts, thus ensuring flexibility with regard to the Saturday shift.

The Department has also decided that in order to accommodate the need for operational meetings between managers and staff, the various offices will open for clients at 9H00 on the last Wednesday of every month.  

In summary:

• Office hours Monday to Friday: 07h30 until 16h30 (Public hours 08h00 until 16h00)
• Office hours Saturdays: 08h00 until 13h00 (Public hours 08h30 until 12h30)
• Office hours last Wednesday of every month: 07h30 until 16H30 (Public hours 09h00 until 16H00)
• Two (2) shifts remain
  • Early Shift: 07h30 - 16h00 (8 hours)
  • Late Shift: 09h00 - 16h30 (7 hours) {also the staff to work on the Saturday}

The new opening and closing hours will undoubtedly be of benefit to clients and DHA staff. These will include having more staff available on any particular shift to address service delivery demands in the front office. Our clients will spend less time in queues. The alignment of opening and closing hours with back office (BVR and Head Office) will further benefit front offices and, importantly, our clients. This means BVR and Head Office will be available to render support to front offices during client opening and closing hours.

Specifying client opening and closing hours will make it possible for staff to effectively execute day end functions and finalize administrative processes, thus improving efficiencies as well. The 30 minutes, from 07h30 to 08h00, before opening for service to the clients, will create a platform to identify and tackle problems that may arise, with less impact on service to the clients.

We would like to inform members of the public that the new opening and closing hours will be operational from Monday 23 March 2015.

Meantime the Department will embark on an extensive communication and awareness programme to ensure all our clients and stakeholders are familiar with the new arrangement.

These changes are a part of the Department’s broader drive to improve quality of service to the clients. We are well aware that our environment is remarkably different from many others in government, and that no one size fits all, hence this homemade solution for the enhancement of our service delivery obligations.

I thank you.