The Zimbabweans and South African border authorities have put in place mechanisms aimed at dealing with congestion at the Beit Bridge border post during the festive season.

Zimbabwe’s regional immigration manager in charge of Beit Bridge Border Post, Mr Charles Gwede, told Limpopo Mirror that they had held a series of meetings with South African stakeholders on how they would jointly work together to speed up the process of clearing travellers during the Christmas holiday.

"We have various systems in place to co-ordinate and see how best we can tackle congestion during the festive period. As border stakeholders, we have held several inter-border meetings with our South African counterparts to discuss and explore ways and strategies aimed at dealing with congestion during this period. We need to work together with the South African authorities and exchange notes, because the issue of congestion on either side has an impact on both the sides of the border,” he said.

Gwede said they experienced a slight increase in the number of travellers who passed through the border last weekend, "largely because it was a month-end, when most travellers would be going for shopping. We anticipate, however, that there will be a huge influx of travellers passing through the border post as we approach the festive season,” Gwede said.

Traditionally, immigration officials at Beit Bridge Border Post handle an increased number of travellers during the festive season, most of whom will be Zimbabweans working in South Africa, flocking back into their country to spend Christmas with their families at home. "Other nationals, such as Zambians and Malawians, also use the Beit Bridge Border Post, resulting in pressure on our personnel. Therefore, we are working on various strategies to ensure that we speed up the clearance of travellers. We will categorise travellers and create more counters to enhance the clearance process,” he said.

Gwede added that they would suspend leave and off-days for their staff in the run-up to the festive season. “As part of our decongestion drive, we will rearrange our shifts to maximize manpower between 22 and 25 December, when we anticipate that there will be a huge influx of travellers. We will further dissolve the shift from three to two, to ensure that we have more officers per shift. That will effectively manage the queue and speed up the clearance process,” he said.

Gwede said they were expecting more officers from other stations to beef up the local staff complement and ensure that all check points and counters were adequately manned. “We continue to urge other stakeholders to complement our efforts to ensure the smooth passage of travellers during the festive period. We will also tighten security at the border to deter touts and bogus clearing agents from accessing the border area. We have put a fence around the border area to enhance security and there are access-controlled gates manned for 24 hours by police,” he added.

In the past, there was uncontrolled entry into the border area, resulting in touts and bogus clearing agents finding their way into the customs yard where they would swindle unsuspecting travellers (mostly foreigners) out of their money under the guise of offering assistance.

Beit Bridge is the busiest inland port of entry in sub-Saharan Africa, which handles a huge volume of both human and vehicular traffic passing through every day. Commercial trucks destined for east and central African countries such as Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, also pass through the border post.