Dear Leon Scheiber

Congratulations on your recent appointment. I have been a citizen of this country for over 55 years and am now 74 years of age. I have been trying to get a passport in SA for as many years as i have been here. My permanent residency used to be stamped in my passport and when travelling i always had just one passport (British) with the SA stamp of residency in that passport. Since 1994 the government did not recognise this stamp in my passport and i was forced to apply for another piece of paper through a company called VHS and pay R10,000 for a print out of my permanent resident status. This involved filling out paperwork which was exhaustive and menial. Questions like what jobs did your grandfather work in and where?? who knows these questions . My status as a permanent resident exists on your home affairs computer and all it needs is to be printed out. It should be so easy.
Please will you change this to assist hundreds of thousands of permanent residents who remain victims of customs officers at points of entry into this country without a permanent resident status . They demand a piece of paper that states this . This is a crazy situations because the piece of paper will obviously deteriorate in age and i would have to pay another R10k for a replacement .
The website (HA) is abysmally victorian and a sad reminder of the status that this country is now in. It is the gateway for tourists entering into our country and fails because its total overall design and functionality is chronically absur . This applies to all government websites in general except maybe to SARS.

PLEASE HELP ME and others like me who cannot afford having to be pulled out of queues at airports and told that they are no longer allowed back into the country.

regards Peter Turton