South African and Zimbabwe immigration officials at the Beit Bridge border post have started putting mechanisms in place, aimed at decongesting the border post in anticipation of a huge influx of travellers during the Easter holiday period.

Zimbabwe’s regional immigration manager in charge of Beit Bridge Border Post, Mr Charles Gwede, told Limpopo Mirror that they had since held a preliminary inter-border meeting with their South African counterparts and other local key stakeholders. “As we approach the  Easter holiday period, we normally get an increased volume of travellers coming from or heading to South Africa, resulting in pressure on our personnel.

“We have therefore started working on various strategies to ensure that we speed up the clearance of travellers during that period. We held a meeting with South African immigration officials and other stakeholders, so that we harmonize our operations and are able to jointly coordinate the implementation of our plans. Congestion on our side has a direct link with what would be happening on the South African side as well,” he said.

Gwede said as part of the decongestion strategy, commercial vehicles and buses would be cleared according to their sequence of arrival at the border to avoid unnecessary congestion, adding that more counters would be created to ease cthe situation. “As part of our decongestion drive, we have collapsed our shifts from four to three, so that we have more officers per shift to manage the queues  and speed up the clearance process,” he said.

Gwede said they had since deployed more officers to help beef up the existing staff.

“We have also suspended leave days for our staff up to 16 April, taking into account that they would be school holidays in Zimbabwe and South Africa, hence an increase in the number of travellers on both entry and exit side. We will, however, continue to adjust our shifts, depending on the movement as we monitor the situation,” he said.

Gwede said all our checkpoints both on the exit and entry side would be adequately manned to enhance security at the border.

The local police spokesperson, Chief Supt Lawrence Chinhengo, said they had since deployed more officers at the border to enhance security.

“We have tightened security at the border and more officers have been deployed at all strategic points, so that we curb crime during the Easter holiday. We want to ensure that criminals who normally capitalize on the commotion during the peak to rob travellers have no access to the border area,” he said.

Chinhengo said they had also intensified patrols along the major highways to clamp down on robbers targeting mostly foreign motorists. “We are aware that criminals have a tendency of wanting to cash in on the increase in the volume of traffic at the border. They go to the highways and waylay motorists, hence we have intensified our patrols along highways."