BY OWETHU DLAMINI AND PHUMELELE MKHONTA
MBABANE – Network disturbances in the country did not hinder operations at the border gate.
After the two days of limited activity in the country and a network shutdown, the Ministry of Home Affairs confirmed that alternative measures were taken to ensure that business continued in some of the different departments such as immigrations.
During an interview with Chief Immigrations Officer, Makhosi Simelane, he mentioned that usually, when there were disruptions that took place and could potentially disturb the manner in which they operated in these departments, particularly immigration, they would revert to their old system of working.
“At times you find that there is no electricity or the network is down, this is when we then revert back to our old system where people fill in forms at the border gate when entering or leaving the country. This is done so as to clear them manually and when the network is restored, we are then able to feed-back from the forms that are filled in when there is no network,” said Simelane.
Simelane went on to mention that there were a few challenges faced when it came to the processing of travel documents and passports as this was dependent on if the system was operational or not.
“Only those who were going to receive their travel documents and passports were able to get them as these documents were already processed when the network was still available. Those who had applied for permits were affected as well because even if the permits had already been processed, payments are made through the government system,” said Simelane. Simelane finally mentioned that even with the challenges that were faced by the ministry during this period, he was pleased with the fact that there were services that they were able to offer to the public manually.
