News / Africa
Botswana immigration officers are inefficient, lazy, uneducated and lack customer care
08 Apr 2013 at 15:19hrs | Views
South African based Pilate Moyo, who is also a facilitator, assessor and quality assurer at College of Business and Maritime Studies, describes his time while going through Botswana to and from Zimbabwe as nightmarish.
"I spent six hours at Martins Drift Border Post and another 13 hours at Ramakgwebane Border Post just because the immigration officers in Botswana are downright inefficient, lazy, uneducated and lack customer care".
His efforts to try and use the Matsiloje Border Post hoping it would be better, were even more frustrating when he spent the whole day there (13 hours).
"I arrived there at 8.00am and only left the border at 4pm. Surprisingly there was no queue on the Zimbabwe side of the border yet there was only one immigration officer who was stamping passports, but there were two on the Batswana side but they failed to speed up the process, we spent a good eight hours as compared to five minutes on the Zimbabwe side of the border.
"Surely these Batswana officers need to go back for retraining. They are just useless, they can't even speak a single word in English, the only language they know is their mother tongue. Never again shall I go via that country".
"If you can spend 10 minutes on the South African side of the border and 10 minutes on the Zimbabwe side of the border but more than 12 hours on the Botswana side surely there is something wrong with the Botswana Immigration. These people should be taken out of the SADC region because they are really a hindrance towards the development of the region", he ranted on his Facebook page shortly after finally arriving in Johannesburg.
However, on Sunday the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs spokesperson Osisenaxa Lekgoko was unable to comment on Moyo's concerns until she has read it on Monday.
"I spent six hours at Martins Drift Border Post and another 13 hours at Ramakgwebane Border Post just because the immigration officers in Botswana are downright inefficient, lazy, uneducated and lack customer care".
His efforts to try and use the Matsiloje Border Post hoping it would be better, were even more frustrating when he spent the whole day there (13 hours).
"I arrived there at 8.00am and only left the border at 4pm. Surprisingly there was no queue on the Zimbabwe side of the border yet there was only one immigration officer who was stamping passports, but there were two on the Batswana side but they failed to speed up the process, we spent a good eight hours as compared to five minutes on the Zimbabwe side of the border.
"Surely these Batswana officers need to go back for retraining. They are just useless, they can't even speak a single word in English, the only language they know is their mother tongue. Never again shall I go via that country".
"If you can spend 10 minutes on the South African side of the border and 10 minutes on the Zimbabwe side of the border but more than 12 hours on the Botswana side surely there is something wrong with the Botswana Immigration. These people should be taken out of the SADC region because they are really a hindrance towards the development of the region", he ranted on his Facebook page shortly after finally arriving in Johannesburg.
However, on Sunday the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs spokesperson Osisenaxa Lekgoko was unable to comment on Moyo's concerns until she has read it on Monday.
Source - mneng
