South African immigration to manage volunteers from 170 countries for 2010 World Cup
September 03 2009 by Matt Jones
South Africa BRT launches
68,000 people from 170 different countries have applied to volunteer at the South African 2010 World Cup.
The World Cup is estimated to bring in 450,000 people from overseas to South Africa. Thousands of which will be taking up the important volunteer work in South Africa.
The largest number of foreign volunteer applications were made by Nigerians with 750 applications being made from Nigeria. The United States of America came in second with 554 applications. Brazil was third with 489 and Zimbabwe was close behind with 449 applications. Italy were next with a surprisingly high 414 applications. South African applications provided in the majority of the rest of the 68,000 applications.
Most of the applications were from people wanting to help with administrative report, but ushering services were also found to be popular.
The applicants from overseas will be interviewed over the phone and with Skype. This process will begin this December and then the training for the selected applicants will begin.
South African immigration created a special type of visa called an ‘event’ visa, to make it easier to handle the numbers of volunteers and fans that will be entering the country.
In related news South Africa have launched a Bus Rapid Transit system (BRT) in Johannesburg which will play an important role in transportation for the World Cup. The buses will run at a very impressive rate of every three minutes at peak times.
The BRT is modelled on Columbia’s system and will be launched in other major cities as well. More than 90 taxi drivers have been trained to drive the Johannesburg BRT in an effort to encourage the greener and more efficient system.
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