Officials at Zimbabwe’s Department of Immigration at Beit Bridge will soon meet their South African counterparts to map the way forward and put in place mechanisms aimed at dealing with congestion at the border post ahead of the festive season.

The regional immigration manager in charge of Beit Bridge border post, Mr Charles Gwede, told Mirror that they were now working on a consolidated plan for presentation during an inter-border meeting with the South African Home Affairs Department.

“We need to work together with the South African authorities, because the issue of congestion on our side has a direct link with what will be happening on the South African side.”

Gwede said the movement of travellers was currently normally, with an average of about 8 000 people passing through every day at both the entry and exit side. He added, however, that during month ends, the number of increased to about 15 000, largely because a number of travellers would be going for shopping.

It is anticipated that there will be a huge influx of travellers passing through the border post during the festive season.

Traditionally, both Zimbabwean and South African 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.

“We are aware that as we approach the festive season, we normally get an increased volume of travellers coming from or heading to South Africa, including other nationals such as Zambians and Malawians using Beit Bridge border post, resulting in pressure on our personnel and therefore we are working on various strategies to ensure that we speed up the clearance of travellers,” Mr Gwede said.

He said 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 scramble our shifts and ensure that we have more officers per shift to effectively manage the queues and speed up the clearance process.

“We will also request for more staff from other stations to beef up our staff complement, so that we are able to deal with the influx of travellers and ensure that all our check points and counters are adequately manned,” he said.

Gwede said they had also tightened security at the border by erecting a perimeter fence to deter touts and bogus clearing agents from accessing the border area. In the past, there used to be 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 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 though 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.