Johannesburg, Dec 15 (PTI): Indian citizens, especially business leaders, who have been complaining for the past few years about long delays in securing visas for South Africa, may have to wait longer as the government has admitted that its full visa waiting list would only be cleared by the end of June 2024.

While Indian missions grant tourist and business e-visas to South Africans within a week, there is no reciprocal facility for Indian citizens at South African missions in India.

But there is some hope that businesses and academia might be prioritised after a decision, which centralised all visa issues exclusively to the Home Affairs head office in Pretoria, was revoked recently.

“The current backlog across all visa categories is 56,543. The department envisages to have cleared the current backlog by June 2024 for all categories of visas,” Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi said last week in response to a question from an opposition MP.

“The average response time varies for different visa categories,” he said.

The minister said there were processes though for people with critical skills that were needed in South Africa, where the average response time would now be four to 10 weeks.

Motsoaledi said a target of eight weeks had been set for the turnaround time for business and general work visas, to bring it down from the current 14 weeks.

Indian companies have long been asking their government and missions in South Africa to look into the issue.

During a recent conference hosted by CII here, several business leaders highlighted how this delay in granting visas to CEOs and other top officials of companies wanting to invest in South Africa would cause them to take their funds to other countries which welcomed them more readily.

Indian High Commissioner Jaideep Sarkar previously assured Indian heads of companies represented in South Africa that the matter was being addressed with that country’s authorities.

The Indian companies also complained about delays in getting work visas for staff.

“Considering that we bring in staff to train and empower locals, some of whom in our company have actually moved from being unemployed to management positions, one would hope that the South African government would expedite this matter,” said the local head of a major Indian company with a large footprint in South Africa, requesting that he or his company should not be named.

One of the challenges companies faced was that their visa applications at Indian embassies and consulates in India had to be sent to a central point in Pretoria for processing, causing even further delays.

Locally, international schools and universities who had difficulty getting their academic staff to South Africa in time also joined the mounting pressure on that country’s government for reform in its visa regime.

Following representations from several foreign delegates at an investment conference hosted by President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this year as well, South African missions abroad were allowed to attend to visa applications at their offices again since September 1.

Officials of the department said applications in the backlog would be considered according to the priority needs of businesses and other institutions. PTI FH CJ CJ CJ

(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)