Beitbridge border ALERT - traffic increases

THE volume of both human and vehicle traffic has started increasing at Beitbridge Border Post as many Zimbabweans based in South Africa start heading home for the Christmas and New Year holidays.

The assistant regional immigration officer in charge of Beitbridge Border Post, Notius Tarisai, said although the numbers were increasing, the situation was still manageable.

He said on Monday, more than 22,000 people had been cleared against an average of 15,000 people per day.

The number of people who are cleared at the border increases to around 25,000 during peak periods.

"We expect the number of travellers to rise during the weekend. On Monday alone we cleared a total of 22,751 on arrivals. We have aligned our operations in line with the increase in both human and vehicle traffic. Further, we have separated traffic into three categories; returning residents, visitors and buses," he said.

He said they cleared a total of 77,789 travellers between Friday and Sunday, adding that they were anticipating that the number would increase during the weekend.

He said they also cleared a total of 36,168 on the departure side during the same weekend.

Tarisai said they had suspended all off and leave days for staff and were now operating on three shifts instead of the traditional four-hour shifts.

A request for 12 more immigration officers from stations that were not very busy had been forwarded to the authorities.

At the moment, the Department of Immigration has 52 workers.

"Those travelling in buses and returning residents will be cleared outside the immigration hall, while those in transit and other travellers will be cleared inside the main immigration hall. Presently all these are cleared at the same counters. We have also devised a tagging system of clearing passengers in buses in their order of arrival, a system which has proved to be effective in decongesting the border post," he said

He said they had aligned their operations with their counterparts in South Africa in a bid to improve efficiency and speed the flow of traffic.

"We are working with all concerned stakeholders and we will review progress depending with the pressure at hand. At the moment all is in order," said Tarisai.

When a Chronicle news crew visited the border post yesterday, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) had re-assigned officers from less busy sections to the compliance and Temporary Import Permit sections.

There are five counters dealing with the Temporary Import Permits while more officers have been deployed to the search bays.

In previous years, congestion at the border post was blamed on Zimra's inability to deploy more workers to Beitbridge during peak times.

Sources at the border post said more relief workers will be deployed to Beitbridge this week.

It is also understood that South Africa has deployed 70 more immigration officers from less busy stations to Beitbridge Border Post.

The South Africans have also suspended the screening of Ebola on travellers entering that country from Zimbabwe using three thermal computers.

Instead, they are now checking the travellers' movement history of the passports manually.

The screening of Ebola using the few computers had resulted in chaos at the South African border where people would spend more than 5 hours trying to enter that country.

Travellers had to queue for Ebola screening before joining another queue for Immigration and customs formalities.