DHA cancels passport, causes chaos

IN A recent post on Travelinfo’s
Open Jaw, an agent raised
concerns about a rare yet
interesting case in which her client,
who was en route to Walt Disney
World for a family holiday, was denied
boarding because at immigration she
was told that the system showed her
passport had been cancelled. The
agent shared the story with TNW.
The agent, who asked to remain
anonymous, says her client
was meant to travel with family
members – three other adults and
three children – from Cape Town to
Johannesburg and then on to New
York and Orlando. “In Johannesburg,
everyone checked in and proceeded
to immigration. At immigration,
the mother of the children was
told that her passport has been
cancelled, bearing in mind that she
also received a US visa in this same
passport – so much for their security
checks,” she says. “It was a terrible
situation and extremely stressful for
the client. There was no way around
it. The family decided to stick to
their travel schedule and the
mother had to stay behind.”
The agent advised the client to go
to the Department of Home Affairs
the next day to apply for a new
passport, which she duly did. The
client was told that her passport
was cancelled, referred to as a
‘code 9’, in December by the DHA’s
Belville office. “We hoped against
all odds that the DHA would just
be able to adjust the code in their
system, but it wasn’t possible,” the
agent says. The client had to go
through all the passport procedures
as per normal.
Three days later, the client’s new
passport was issued and she was
able to fly out on the same day to
enjoy the remainder of the holiday
with her family. According to the
agent, the costs to apply for a
new passport and rebook flights
cost the client around R7 000.
“We speculate that the client’s
passport was incorrectly cancelled
in December by someone in the
Belville office who punched in a
wrong passport number,” the agent
says. To date, the DHA has not
offered an explanation or followed
up on what happened.