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Cape Town - DA MP James Vos says he will be attending the Home Affairs Portfolio Committee being held next week Tuesday to ask for a special task team to review the visa regulations set to come into effect on 1 June.
Vos said in a statement that President Zuma had promised to prioritise the review in his 2015 State of the Nation address (SONA) “but has not yet delivered on his commitment”.
In his SONA speech Zuma said the review of visa regulations would be “to strike a balance between national security and growth in tourism”.
READ: Department of Home Affairs issues official visa brochure for children travelling to SA
Department of Home Affairs Spokesperson Mayihlome Tshwete
told traveller24 the department is in the process of holding roundtable
discussions with key tourism stakeholders but has yet to confirm who the
stakeholders are and if there had been any key outcomes to date.
The new visa regulations, which are set to apply from 1 June 2015, will require all parents entering South Africa to provide an unabridged birth certificate of all travelling children, providing details of the child's father and mother. This applies even when both parents are travelling with their children.
When children are travelling with guardians, these adults are required to produce affidavits from parents proving permission for the children to travel as well as the unabridged birth certificates .
READ: Home affairs launches premium visa centre in Sandton
unabridged birth certificate applications can take up to
eight weeks to complete and airlines will be forced to refuse travel to
families not in possession of these documents.
“A child denied boarding by an airline ultimately means a family cannot travel and, by industry estimates, until traveller awareness is 100%, tourist arrivals to South Africa could be negatively impacted by up to 20%. Based on 2013 numbers, 536 000 foreign visitors could be denied travel. This is simply unacceptable,” said Vos.
The latest voice of concern around the rules have come from the Institute for Race Relations (IRR), with its CEO Dr Frans Cronjé calling on the department of home affairs to delay the implementation of the new rules.
"The new travel requirements could see international tourists choose other travel destinations over South Africa. South Africa's primary and secondary industries - agriculture, mining, and manufacturing - were in long-term decline both in terms of their contributions to GDP and their ability to create jobs and that this had closed off work opportunities to less skilled people.
"The tourism industry, however, had the potential to replace the jobs lost in those declining sectors,"Cronjé said.
According to Cronjé, the danger therefore is that South African policy makers are closing off another avenue of employment to poor and unskilled people – especially in rural areas where tourists might have travelled to.
