I have been thinking a lot lately about the state that our country is in, some of my thoughts are good, some of them not so good, but sometimes (through the white haze of my pregnancy porridge brain) thoughts pop into my head that are actually……well…… productive, logical, possibly inspirational and would definitely go towards bettering our country as a whole!

One of these ideas came to me, while investigating the changing of my personal particulars to my new married name. For those of you who have done this will know how much of rigmarole it is, you have to renew your id book, passport, drivers license, not to mention all the services like banks, medical aid and so on that are linked to them. What depresses me the most is the thought of having to stand in queues for hours on end, just to be told that you have the wrong form or in the wrong queue and need to start all over again….

So it got me thinking about the state of Home Affairs in this country, KZN in particular. Why are there only two offices (that I’m aware of) in greater eThekwini , to service 3.5 million people and then some? Now I know that when these offices were originally assigned, they were strategically positioned to effectively service the population without any major problems, but 30 years down the line, the population grew, the service itself though hadn’t. Resulting in the nightmare we now know as South African Home Affairs

So my ingenious plan is, why can’t each suburb have its own satellite station, organised by our local elected counselors. It won’t take much, perhaps a prefab house placed next to the local police station, with one or two trained government officials, a computer linked up to a central network (this is already in place now), a stamp, a printer and a bloody good courier system. Only residents in the suburb can go to these stations, all documents that need certification can be done at the police station next door and viola you have your very own internal home affairs department.

Just think how stress free the process will be, imagine being able to say to your significant other “just popping out to home affairs quickly to renew my driver’s license will be back in about 20 min”. The officials working for the department will be a lot less stressed, therefore better job satisfaction resulting in hopefully less nationwide strikes. And most importantly think how many job opportunities will open up, Zuma may actually be able to meet his long awaited half a mill job quota after all………………..

Just a thought

By: Kerry