Thousands in queue for residence permits

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podzap
Posts: 151
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2003 1:32 am

Thousands in queue for residence permits

Post by podzap » Sun Mar 26, 2017 9:14 am

The lines and processing times are reportedly longest in Helsinki, where in recent weeks, dozens of people had to wait on the street just to get a number for official service.

Gillian Ngwane is one of them. She is awaiting a residence permit extension for herself and her daughter. Ngwane told Yle that she arrived at the Finnish Immigration Service’s Helsinki office at 6.00am, two hours before opening time, after finally learning how to beat the system and get a service number to see an immigration official. However her tactic failed to pay off.

"Yesterday I was here for two hours. They came and counted from one to 50. They said that I was number 51 and told me to go home; they had no more queuing numbers. I’ve never seen anything like this," she added.

Ngwane said that she was not happy standing outside in the rain. But the next time, she got a number.


http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/thous ... ly/9526834



Thousands in queue for residence permits

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NukkuMatti
Posts: 273
Joined: Fri Nov 20, 2015 9:51 pm

Re: Thousands in queue for residence permits

Post by NukkuMatti » Sun Mar 26, 2017 11:38 am

Migri is not the only one.

Last week I was at Kela office, came nice 30 minutes before opening time and there was already a queue of 15 people waiting for the number machine that would start working at exactly 10 o'clock.
So yes I got number 16, I thought yes today I will finally have time to deal with the mistakes they made and have them corrected.

But to my utter horror, the first number was called in and after half an hour there was still only this number one being serviced. After 45 minutes, number one came out and it took another 15 minutes before number two was called.

So lets calculate for a moment: 1 hour for one client and only one booth occupied by a service desk employee. That would make me last in line on the next day.
I decided to go home and try the next day to get there already at 8 in the morning to be sure I would be the first one (take tablet with movies with me to kill the time) so I would only have to wait for the two hours.

This plan worked well, at least I thought when I came out of the elevator all was empty, just the security was there. SO I told the security I would wait there for 2 hours before it would open.
The security told me it would be closed for today, (there was no mentioning of this the day before) and indeed I saw a new printed paper on all 6 empty booths that Kela would actually be closed for the remainder of the week and the nearest open offices were in Helsinki (like way way out of my area).

Keep in mind that this service is already way behind with helping people pay for their medicine, how can you solve these problems if you close up shop totally??? :thumbsdown:

podzap
Posts: 151
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2003 1:32 am

Re: Thousands in queue for residence permits

Post by podzap » Mon Apr 24, 2017 9:12 am

Kela is an entirely different organisation than Migri.

A little more than 4 years back, I spent 6 weeks outside the country and when I returned I found that my Kela eligibility had been cancelled entirely. 100% cancelled. To correct the situation, I never needed to visit any kela office. I called them on the phone and they asked me to provide some information via an online form. It took them about 2 months to send me the reinstatement letter.

Point is, they really don't want people visiting their offices and have designed the service so that you can do almost anything online - including disputes.


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