The Home Affairs Department has vowed to act against heavy-handed guards at its refugee reception centre in Cape Town.
|||Cape Town - The Department of Home Affairs is to announce next week what action it will take against corrupt officials and heavy-handed guards at its refugee reception centre on the Foreshore.
“There have been allegations of corruption by some of (our) staff and members of the company responsible for security at the centre,” provincial manager Yusuf Simons said on Thursday.
He would not give details.
Simons said that the deputy home affairs minister, Fatima Chohan, had been briefed.
He was approached on Thursday about the abuse of refugees at the centre and the continual long queues which led to a violent clash on Tuesday between the police and refugees, some of whom had waited days to renew asylum permits. Rubber bullets were fired when the police dispersed a group that hurled stones at staff and guards at the centre. The confrontation followed Cape Argus photographer Thomas Holder being assaulted by a guard when he took pictures of refugees being hosed with water on a cold Monday.
Simons explained that the long wait was mainly due to the small space the refugee reception centre occupied in Customs House on the Foreshore. The centre had been located in Customs House in 1998 and since then had had to move several times. Court action by business owners had forced the centre to move from space it rented in Nyanga and later Maitland, he said.
The Maitland centre was about 2 500m2 - big enough to accommodate 600 people seated in a hall and a covered standing area for another 300 people. Space used at Customs House could accommodate about 150 people, Simons said.
“We have smaller space for about the same number of people. On any day we have about 1 000 people waiting. Part of the problem is that 99 percent of the people did not enter the country through a Cape Town port of entry,” he said.
A long queue of refugees again battled the wet and cold weather on Thursday at the centre.
“I really feel for them,” said Ugandan refugee Ssimbwa Peter, who works in the Eastern Cape.
He waited four days, sleeping on the streets before his permit was renewed on Tuesday.
“The last time I came to Cape Town to renew my permit everything went fine. I came by bus in the morning, waited and got my documents, and by evening I was back on the bus. I don’t know why things have changed,” Peter said.
Cape Times