Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber has announced the introduction of doorstep delivery via courier of passports for South African citizens living abroad.
The service will be available from November 1, Schreiber said at an event in The Hague in the Netherlands, where Home Affairs has launched its latest dedicated service centre that reduces waiting times for passport applications from up to 18 months to just weeks.
The courier delivery options eliminate the need for people to travel to an office for a second time just for document collection.
Turnaround times will range from 24 to 72 hours and will attract a fee ranging between $30 (R520) and $60 (R1,041). The service will initially be available at the existing service centres located in 18 cities around the world, with more set to be launched over the coming months.
“The initial rollout of this service to South Africans living abroad enables the department to refine and perfect the process in a sandbox environment, before rolling out the option of doorstep delivery to all clients in South Africa as well,” Schreiber said.
“Once we are comfortable that doorstep delivery is working smoothly and securely for the relatively small population of South Africans living abroad, we will scale-up this reform to provide all South Africans with the option to have their documents delivered to their doorstep, including through our new digital partnership model with the banking sector.”
Information on all locations that will offer this service from November 1 is available here.
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