Processing Centre of Excellence
8 August 2007
Marabastad to be upgraded as turnaround builds the new Home Affairs
The Rosettenville Refugee Centre in Johannesburg is to close as the
Department of Home Affairs consolidates and upgrades the processing of asylum
applications in southern Gauteng at a new centre of excellence in Crown Mines.
The centre of excellence is a further result of the Department's Turnaround
Project initiated by Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula to build the new Home
Affairs. At the same time, the refugee processing centre at Marabastad, west of
Pretoria will be upgraded to ensure that appropriate facilities are available
to applicants.
Directed from the office of Director-General Mavuso Msimang, the Turnaround
Action Team of external public and private sector consultants and the
departmental staff integrated into the Project's work-streams are together
tasked with building a radically more efficient, customer and business friendly
Home Affairs to fight corruption effectively deliver services on time and serve
the population and the economy.
Included in the mandate is a "quick win" work-stream to rapidly improve the
processing of refugee applications and to deal with the backlog in this area.
The date for the closure of Rosettenville will be announced as soon as the
detailed logistics of moving staff and infrastructure, including Information
Technology (IT) systems to Crown Mines are finalised.
"Crown Mines is a much larger facility already used for refugee processing,
with the necessary space to expand as we eradicate the backlog and streamline
our processes. The consolidation of our southern Gauteng refugee processing at
this location allows us to provide facilities of an acceptable standard while
ensuring much quicker turnaround times and more rapid legal certainty to asylum
seekers," said Director General Mavuso Msimang.
Besides the erection of temporary structures at Marabastad to ease the
congestion, the provision of additional toilet facilities and a facelift are on
the cards for the next weeks. Marabastad is the refugee processing centre
serving northern Gauteng and the neighbouring provinces.
Asylum seekers are granted recognised refugee status if they are able to
show that they have been the victims of political, religious, gender-based, or
ethnic intolerance elsewhere. Economic migrants are not among those recognised
as refugees under the relevant United Nations conventions to which South Africa
is a signatory.
Part of the job of Home Affairs in adjudicating applications from asylum
seekers is to identify those who have no claim to refugee status but have been
led to believe that this is an easy way to regularise their South African
residence. Applications of this kind often duplicated at different processing
centres have significantly contributed to the backlog of unprocessed refugee
applications.
The department's refugee backlog project has succeeded in adjudicating 38
950 applications to the end of June this year. Home Affairs will announce
further measures in this regard in the coming weeks.
Enquiries:
Jacky Mashapu
Cell: 082 885 8449
Issued by: Department of Home Affairs
8 August 2007
