Address by Home Affairs Minister, Malusi Gigaba at the launch of the DHA Premium Visa and Permit Services Centre.
Good day, I would like to thank you all for joining us today.
Home Affairs is acutely aware of the importance of immigration management to South Africa’s economic development, in facilitating the entry into South Africa of skilled workers and investors.
The National Development Plan (NDP) explicitly identifies the importance of immigration management in this regard.
This is why we are very excited to announce our partnership with Gauteng Provincial Government’s Gauteng Growth and Development Agency (GGDA), and Visa Facilitation Services.
Through this partnership, we will be able to serve corporate clients at the DHA Premium Visa & Permit Services Centre, located here at GGDA’s Gauteng Investment Centre (GIC) in Sandton.
In doing so, we support GGDA’s efforts to offer a ‘one stop shop’ to prospective investors and exporters to fulfill administrative requirements, improving ease of doing business in Gauteng.
In recent years, Home Affairs has focused on improving customer service.
This relates to both efficiency in relation to turnaround times, and customer experience in the process of applying for and collecting visas and permits. This is why we appointed VFS in 2013 to receive and manage visa and permit applications in South Africa. VFS now operates 11 visa facilitation centres around South Africa.
It has enabled us to concentrate our limited resources on adjudicating applications, and serving large and strategic customers through our Corporate Accounts Unit. The DHA Premium Visa & Permit Services Centre represents another channel through which we can serve these clients. We are highly conscious of the fact that our Corporate Accounts Clients require a specific value proposition.
They require professional immigration advisory services, reduced turnaround times, and certainty of a predictable outcome. Corporate Accounts Clients and their families will be able to get the best of both worlds at the Centre. They will be able to apply for and collect visas, permits, waivers and exemptions with the VFS staff.
They will also be able to get immigration-related advice and information from the dedicated Home Affairs staff nearby.
As part of the unique value proposition we are creating for corporate clients, we will offer reduced turnarounds of 4 weeks for a decision for most visas.
To achieve this, we are establishing a dedicated centre of excellence in our back office, with dedicated adjudication staff to deal specifically with applications received from this centre.
This is made possible through the partnership we have established with our corporate clients. These are large businesses, organisations, and employers who are accredited with the Corporate Accounts Unit based on specific criteria.
These criteria include:
- The number of visas required in key positions
- National priorities, and relevance of the visa requested to the development of national infrastructure
- Proof that at least 60% of the total staff complement are South Africans
This includes clients such as: Eskom; automobile manufacturers such as BMW, Toyota, VW and Mercedes-Benz South Africa; all major banks; all universities; oil and gas companies such as Total, BP and PetroSA; professional services firms such as Ernst & Young, Deloitte and KPMG; and consumer goods companies such as Nestle.
As you can see, these clients make an important contribution to our economy.
They represent major contributions in economic infrastructure, manufacturing, energy, retail, professional and financial services, research and development, and knowledge production.
They are instrumental to the transformation of our economy for the benefit of all South Africans.
Working together, we can realise the call of the National Development Plan to “adopt a more open approach to skilled immigration to expand the supply of high skills in the short term, in a manner that obviates displacement of South Africans.”
Our partnership with the responsible organisations served by our Corporate Accounts Unit exemplifies what the NDP calls upon us to do. Being located in the GIC gives us the opportunity to be close to our corporate clients, as Sandton is an important commercial hub.
This partnership with Gauteng and the GGDA is the first of its nature with a provincial government, and we hope and expect that it will be the first of many. There is a tremendous opportunity to work with provinces to locate Home Affairs officials and visa facilitation centres in investment hubs such as this.
As this Centre is proven successful and the model perfected, we will approach other provinces to roll out similar centres in other commercial hubs around the country.
The ‘one stop shop’ concept responds to the needs and demands of corporates, businesspeople and investors, and is an international best practice. We will consistently look for innovative ways to offer immigration services.
Indeed this Centre is a reminder of what can be achieved when different levels of government, and the private sector work together.
I have said before and will reiterate: South Africa is open for business.
We value the skills and investment that our corporate clients and prospective investors and exporters bring.
We will continue to look for innovative ways to better serve our clients, and to contribute to South Africa’s development.
Thank you for your attention.
