Zimpapers Logo

Thupeyo Muleya Beitbridge Bureau
THE Department of Immigration says it is ready to deal with an anticipated surge in both human and vehicular traffic at Beitbridge Border Post during the Easter holidays.The acting immigration officer-in-charge of Beitbridge, Innocent Hamandishe, said yesterday that they had deployed adequately and were ready to roll.

“We’ve come up with a raft of measures to ensure the smooth flow of traffic. We’ve a staff complement of 71 immigration officers which is adequate to deal with an increase in the volume of both human and vehicular traffic,” said Hamandishe.

“We received 26 new permanent immigration officers in December and we’re more than ready to roll. Traffic has since been separated into buses, returning residents, visitors, transit, motorists and commercial. Further we’re going to be opening up more clearing points outside the main immigration hall.”

Hamandishe said the department had since aligned operations with its South African counterparts with effect from March 27 to April 13.

He said Zimra, the police and Zinara have pledged total support in ensuring the efficient clearance of traffic.

“Those travelling in buses will be assisted through the tagging system (cleared on first come first serve basis). We’ll be having Zimra officers and the police at all our outside counters where people will be cleared once for passage through the border post,” said Hamandishe.

He said the immigration department had created an express route for motorists who would want to access gate passes from Zinara.

Hamandishe said leave days and off days for border staff had been suspended to ensure the department operates at full strength throughout the Easter holidays.

“We anticipate the volume of traffic to peak between March 31 and April 8. We’re very confident that the movement of traffic will improve during the Easter holidays,” he said.

Hamandishe called on the travelling public to cooperate with border authorities to ensure a speedy flow of traffic.

He said the Zimbabwean and South African immigration departments had agreed in principle to hold traffic on either side of the border if they run out of parking space.

“We’ve already deployed our security guards to all entry and exit points to ensure the safety of travellers. These will also help prevent undesirable elements like touts, vendors and dealers from entering the border. These normally want to capitalise on the increase in traffic during that period. Their presence causes unnecessary congestion within the border area,” said Hamandishe.

He said by yesterday the situation was still manageable.

Hamandishe said an average of 15,000 travellers on arrivals, 5,000 departures and a transit population of 18,000 were passing through the border post daily.

Beitbridge border post is one of the busiest ports of entry in the Sadc region.

Around 170,000 travellers, 2,100 buses, between 14,000 and 15,000 haulage trucks and 25,000 private cars pass through the border post monthly.