By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Department of Home Affairs said its technicians have managed to restore the State Information Technology Agency’s mainframe which was down due to a technical problem.
The system has been down since Tuesday.
Services were available to citizens and other clients from Thursday midday.
Home Affairs spokesperson Siya Qoza said the issue was due to a technical problem on the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) mainframe, which affected access to the National Population Register.
“Technicians from the State Information Technology Agency are monitoring the system to ensure the solution is sustainable. Further updates will be provided where necessary.”
The DHA confirmed the outage two hours after the Democratic Alliance (DA) had issued a media statement criticising the department’s failure to deliver services due to the downtime.
“We are being inundated with calls from applicants who wish to travel abroad but are unable to as they have not received their passports,” said DA spokesperson on Home Affairs, Angel Khanyile.
Khanyile called on the DHA to hold SITA accountable for the issues.
Home Affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi previously threatened to ditch SITA, fingering its IT services as the primary cause of Home Affairs’ problems.