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Thupeyo Muleya Beitbridge Bureau
THE Department of Immigration says it is intercepting an average of 100 illegal immigrants at Beitbridge Border Post as they try to skip the country to South Africa on a daily basis.Speaking during a media tour coordinated by the Humanitarian Information Facilitation Centre yesterday, the Assistant Regional Immigration Officer in charge of Beitbridge Border Post, Notius Tarisai, said the migrants were being transported mainly in South African registered Toyota Quantums.

He said they were working together with other security agents to contain the situation.

“We have a problem of parents trying to  smuggle their children through the border post especially during holidays. These use the border post or other undesignated entry points along the boundary line.

“We are carrying out periodic raids at known points with the assistance of the police and this is paying dividends,” said Tarisai.

He said they had made submissions to their main office in Harare for the deployment of 20 more immigration officers and 24 immigration guards.
Tarisai revealed that they were operating with a staff complement of 52 people.

He said with more hands on the job, they would increase search points before the border post and minimise irregular migration.

“The smuggling of children in kombis is worrisome and hence we have intensified searches on all vehicles leaving or entering the country.
“We have sent a lot of the transporters to the courts where most of them have been imprisoned for not less than two years,” said Tarisai.

He added that they also have a problem with illegal migrants from countries in the Horn of Africa region who break the country’s immigration laws willfully.

The immigration officer said these were conferring themselves refugee status and were not willing to comply with the law.

“Immigrants from countries in the Horn of Africa are not interested in using our border and we intercept them during routine raids around the boundary line. We arrest a lot of them after they fail to cross to South Africa through the Limpopo River which is a natural impediment,” he said.

Those immigrants intercepted while entering the country were fined $10 for entry by evasion.

Tarisai said there was a need for government to speed up the border expansion and upgrading programme in line with the changing trends in movement of both human and vehicular traffic.

Each day, 175,000 travellers, 21,000 buses, 14,000 to 15,000 haulage trucks and 25,000 private cars pass through the border.