Please note: Immigration South Africa™ is a private immigration law firm and not VFS. If you are looking for VFS, please contact them on the details given below.
VFS Global – Visa Facilitation Services (South Africa)
Ever since VFS Global was announced as the alternative to submitting your immigration application, questions were raised about the procedures, costs and also the tender awarding to VFS itself. Little has been answered, even in the media briefing given by Malusi Gigaba recently. In fact, while the fee schedule for Home Affairs is yet to be announced, what is known is the fee schedule for VFS Global’s South Africa centre services around the country. The R1,350 for almost any application has been mentioned and quoted for some time now, however there are other costs involved for some. Here they are:
Service Charge for Application Handling:
| SERVICE | ZAR |
|---|---|
| Service Charge for Application Handling – Price per Applicant | 1350 |
Charges for Optional Services:
| SERVICE | ZAR |
|---|---|
| Self Service computer terminal for form filling (Only available in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban) – Price per Applicant | 100 |
| Photocopy Services – Price per Page | 1 |
| SMS notifications | 20 |
| Premium Lounge (Only available in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban) – Price per Applicant | 500 |
How the R1,350 fee was decided is unknown, however the revenue from, for example, a monthly application count of just 10,000 people around South Africa makes VFS’s shareholders R13,500,000 richer in turnover. In addition, the cost which brings questions to the fore is the R20 per SMS notification. With SMS bundles from service providers at under R0.20 for bulk SMSs, this is exorbitant and reflects that something is wrong with the fee-making decisions at VFS. In fact, since every applicant will want to use the SMS notification system, this simply adds to the R1,350 fee. Brace yourselves for close to a R2,000 bill before you encounter the Home Affairs fee at all.
You can now also schedule an appointment at VFS and see things like the Critical Skills Work Visa list on their website. After applying, you can track your application (which currently leads you straight to https://www.vfsvisaonline.com/OnlineTracking/OnlineTracking.aspx). This is one of the benefits of the VFS system – applications, at least while in their hands, shouldn’t get lost, should be complete and free of errors, should be in safe hands and in general the environment in which one applies should be better. However, the costs involved and the questions around how this system was implemented remains to be made transparent.
The above shows that all is not gold with VFS. Let us hope that their services match the fees that accompany them.
