Officials successfully deal with Beitbridge Border Post chaos

Traffic passing through Beitbridge Border Post has increased by 29 percent with 105,701 recorded between Friday and Monday ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays.

The assistant regional immigration manager in charge of the border post, Charles Gwede, said the highest number was recorded on Saturday when they handled 36,130 travellers on both entry and exit sides.

Gwede, however, said immigration officials were handling more people on the entry side. According to the latest statistics 62,958 travellers were cleared between Friday and Sunday on the entry side while 34,846 travellers left the country through Beitbridge Border during the same period last year.

"The border has been very busy over the weekend and we are handling more travellers on the entry side as more travellers, mainly Zimbabweans based in South Africa continue to enter the country to spend Christmas holidays with their families," he said.

"We cleared 105,701 travellers between Friday and midday yesterday and we anticipate more arrivals as we are bound to have last hour rush travellers tomorrow (today)."

Gwede said the number of people who accessed the border between December 1 and 23 has reached 612, 773 surpassing last year's 484, 307 during the entire month of December, marking a significant 29 percent increase.

When a Chronicle news crew visited the border post yesterday, the queues were relatively short and travellers were being cleared faster.
Gwede attributed the development to a change in movement trends coupled with their decongestion strategies.

"This year movement was spread out as travellers, especially Zimbabweans working in South Africa travelled earlier compared to last year and that also contributed to a reduction in congestion," he said.

Zimbabweans constitute the highest number of travellers using Beitbridge Border Post. Travellers who spoke to Chronicle yesterday said they were being cleared faster compared to the previous years.

"We are spending between 20 and 30 minutes in the queues. I really want to commend both immigration and customs officers for their sterling work in as far as addressing the issue of congestion is concerned unlike in the past when we would spend several hours waiting to be cleared," said Simelukuhle Sibanda of New Magwegwe and based in Polokwane, South Africa.

A Johannesburg-based injiva, Maxwell Nangara, concurred:
"There is a great improvement at the border including on the South African side where we used to endure long hours in the queue due to delays by border officials in clearing travellers. We hope the situation will remain like this in January when we return to South Africa."

Gwede said the number of travellers had increased over the last few days as Zimbabweans and travellers in transit entered the country through the Beitbridge Border Post.

He however, said so far they had not encountered any problems and all their counters have been effectively manned.  The immigration department received an additional 15 officers to beef up the local staff and help speed up the clearance process.

Border authorities on both sides have also created separate queues for commercial traffic and buses to avoid congestion. As part of their decongestion drive, the immigration authorities have collapsed their shifts to maximise on manpower.

Beitbridge is the busiest inland port of entry in sub-Saharan Africa. It handles an average of 10,000 travellers daily with the figures doubling up during peak periods such Christmas holidays.

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

The movement of travellers started from December 13 and immigration officials have been receiving a huge influx of travellers.

Border stakeholders from both Zimbabwe and South Africa hold inter-border meetings from time to time to discuss and explore strategies aimed at dealing with congestion during peak periods.

During a recent Zimbabwe/South Africa Joint Permanent Commission on Defence and Security in Bulawayo, 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.