About 150 000 Zimbabweans based in South Africa are still waiting for their work and residence permits to be processed, NewsDay has learnt.
South African Home Affairs department spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa told NewsDay they had processed 50 000 permit applications by Zimbabweans to date and they hoped to clear the backlog by the end of July.
“Our target is that before the end of July, we should have finalised and dispatched the remaining 150 000 permit applications,” he said.
“We set up 43 regional offices, a development which has enabled us to clear a backlog of over 50 000 permit applications. However, these do not include special dispensation permit applications that were introduced last year.”
The registration of permits began in September last year and was supposed to close on January 31.
However, the department, in consultation with the Zimbabwean government, agreed to extend the deadline to July 31.
“At a rate of 3 000 applications being worked on per day, the department requires 53 working days to finalise the remaining applications.”
Mamoepa said they had also set up a system of text messaging, which would start operating today, to facilitate the permit processing.
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He said the system was meant to inform applicants who needed to go for fingerprinting, requiring passports from the Zimbabwean consulate and those who needed to submit supporting documents for each of the three types of permits.
