The DA is seriously concerned about a chronic shortage of those tasked with monitoring foreign nationals who enter or leave the country’s borders illegally.
It was revealed in a reply to the DA parliamentary question that the Department of Home Affairs’ inspectorate is grossly understaffed with only 731 employees.
The DA puts it to the Minister of Home Affairs, Malusi Gigaba, to urgently intervene and give this matter much-needed attention to ensure that the inspectorate is fully capacitated to function optimally.
In a previous Parliamentary reply, the Minister admitted that in 2016 a total of 344,547 foreign nationals failed to leave South Africa before or on the date that their visas were set to expire.
However, this figure does not include all those that entered the country illegally through our porous borders.
If the 731 officials were all actively monitoring overstaying foreign nationals, they each would have to process 471 individuals, coupled with the suspected millions of people walking over South African borders.
Due to incapacity and lack of political will by the ANC government, this makes their task near impossible to achieve.
Having a secure border is the first step in ensuring South Africa does not become a soft target for human trafficking syndicates, drug syndicates and other organised crimes.
By comparison, a small city like London has approximately 300 immigration officers yet we only have 731 in the entire country.
The DA will be submitting further follow-up questions about the inspectorate in order to find out how the government intends to strengthen its capacity.