The Polish Embassy in South Africa has implemented measures to curb the unethical selling of student visa dates by Nigerian nationals who were hacking their system. The embassy in Pretoria serves South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe ,among other Southern Africa countries.
The past two years have seen most students from Southern Africa moving to study in Poland as it offers world class education and many other opportunities, however it has been difficult for many parents to secure visa appointment dates lately as the embassy has been dealing with a backlog in procesing students. In July 2023 the embassy decided to implent a system in which dates would be availed on the tenth of each month contrary to the traditional way where dates were availed every saturday.
This system exacerbarted the problem as students had to wait for 30 days to get an appointment date. Mrs Dube a parent from Harare shared her sad experience with Zimcelebs citing that her 21 year old daughter was supposed to start her studies in October 2023 but had to postpone to March 2024 because she could not get an appointment date at the embassy. She explained that many other parents were facing this same problem as it was becoming very difficult to get a date on the 10th.
Another student from South Africa , Thandiwe expressed her frustration citing that at certain times she opened three gadgets , laptops , cell phones and ipads to secure a date but it was all in vain. She eventually gave up and had to also request her school fees money back from the university.
All these problems led to an investigation by an independent team which uncovered that there was a trio of from Zimbabwe who were getting all available dates and selling them for 500 Euros. The group which consist of ladies in Poland and two master minds from Nigeria have been running this business for more than 5 months.In January they sold more than 50 dates to desperate students for 500EUR. While many who had no option decided to buy, others wrote to the embassy airing their views and complaining about the cyndicate which was using softwares to get all the dates.
The Embassy in Pretoria was forced to address this issue on 8 February , in a statement it wrote :
Due to increasing difficulties in booking appointments for submitting a study visa application through the e-Konsulat system, a new registration method will be used from March this year, until further notice. Instead of booking through e-Konsulat, appointment reservations for study visas will only be possible by phone.
Reservations for March will be made on two days of February, 12.02.2024 and 19.02.2024, from 10:00 a.m. through 4:00 p.m., with a break at 12:00-1:00 p.m. The phone will only be switched on for the days of booking appointments. When all available appointments have been booked before 4:00 p.m., the phone will be switched off immediately after the last appointment has been reserved.
In order to make a reservation, a caller will need to provide the following data: name, surname, citizenship, passport number, telephone number and e-mail address.
IMPORTANT! A caller can only make one booking – for themselves. It will not be possible to reserve an appointment for another person.
This option will only be used for booking appointments. We will NOT be offering any information regarding visas, relevant procedures and requirements as well as other consular services.
Booking appointments for Schengen visas, registration of applications for work visas and booking dates for other consular services will be done according to the current rules, i.e. via the e-Konsulat. We kindly remind that we do not accept booking dates for a Schengen visa, in order to submit applications for national study visas. Such reservations will be cancelled and the dates released will be returned to the pool of available dates for Schengen visa appointments.
The phone number to book an appointment is +27 82 801 0884.
The hackers were repotedly collecting deposit amounts of 150Euros from parents inorder to secure dates for the booking of dates in March. This means they are out of business and will have to refund all collected monies. There are not yet reports of police inquiries.
