137,000 travellers have passed through Beitbridge

MORE than 137,000 travellers passed through the Beitbridge Border Post over the weekend as people, mainly Zimbabweans based in South Africa, flock home ahead of the Christmas holiday.

On Tuesday there were long winding queues at the country's busiest inland port of entry.

Holidaymakers were also travelling from South Africa to Zimbabwe and countries further north, using the border post.

The assistant regional immigration manager in charge of the border post, Charles Gwede, said they handled 137,536 travellers between Friday and Monday. He said the highest number was recorded on the arrivals' side where 80,548 travellers were cleared during that period.

"The highest number of arrivals was recorded on Monday when we cleared 20,367 travellers on the arrivals side while on the exit section we had 15,759 people leaving the country through Beitbridge border," said Gwede.

He said as part of their decongestion drive, they had collapsed their shifts to maximise on manpower during the normal and extra-peak days.

"In fact, starting from December 13 we have been receiving a huge influx of travellers and we anticipate a further increase over the weekend as more travellers will pass through the border for Christmas. We have dissolved our shifts to ensure that we have more officers per shift who would effectively manage the queues and speed up the clearance process," he said.

Gwede said they anticipated massive traffic congestion at the border to start intensifying over the weekend as injiva would be coming home to spend Christmas with their families.

"We also received 15 more officers from other stations to beef up the local staff and ensure that all check points and counters are adequately manned and we have also created more filter gates to reduce congestion."

Beitbridge Border Post has a staff complement of 47 immigration officers and support staff.

Gwede said they have, since the closure of schools in Zimbabwe and South Africa, been experiencing an increase in the number of travellers passing through the border post.

He said they had also suspended off and leave days for the immigration staff in the run-up to the festive period.

"We have suspended off and leave days for our staff starting from December 13 to January 13 next year. As border stakeholders, we held several inter-border meetings with our South African counterparts to discuss ways and strategies aimed at dealing with congestion during extra-peak periods," said Gwede.

He added: "We have harmonised our systems and we are working together with South African authorities because the issue of congestion on either side has an impact on both sides of the border."

Gwede said the immigration officers will categorise travellers to create more service points for visitors, motorists, buses and pedestrians as a way of decongesting the border.

He said: "We want to make sure that people do not spend more than 30 minutes in the queues and those travelling in buses will be cleared according to the vehicle register to avoid unnecessary congestion."

Last year's travellers during the Christmas holidays spent several days stranded at the border because of congestion and delays by immigration officials.

During a recent Zimbabwe/South Africa Joint Permanent Commission on Defence and Security, in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, the Home Affairs ministers from the two countries said they would come up with a range of measures to curb congestion and weed out criminal activity at the Beitbridge Border Post during the festive season.

The measures include setting up clearance centres away from the border.

South Africa's Border Control Co-coordinating Committee (BCOCC) said it will deploy more staff at the border to speed up the clearance of travellers.