SA home affairs Zimbabwe documentation project to meet

Johannesburg - The department of home affairs Zimbabwe documentation project will hold a two-day meeting this week with representatives from all home affairs offices in a bid to finalise the project, The Times reported on Wednesday.

Project head, Jacob Mamabolo, said the meeting on Thursday and Friday would also look into claims by some Zimbabweans in Cape Town that records of their applications for work and study visas seem to have vanished.

The project, which launched in September last year, obliged all "undocumented" Zimbabweans to apply for permits by December 31 last year.

The department announced earlier this month that it had finished adjudicating 275 762 applications, and that it wanted "normal immigration processes" to apply by the end-of-August deadline.

But some Zimbabweans said the project was not going as smoothly as the department reported and that they were afraid of being deported.

Mamabolo said Zimbabweans should not worry because the department had already said that people would still be receiving their SMSes advising them of the outcome of their applications.

He said the department was likely to make an announcement about how they would improve the system by Monday next week.