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“This festive season between 14 December and 7 January, we handled 524 511 travellers, marking a 25 percent increase in the number of people who passed through Beitbridge during the festive season compared to the previous year when we handled 392 660 travellers,” he said.
Mr Gwede said most of the travellers that they handled were Zimbabweans working in South Africa commonly known as injiva, who had visited home for the Christmas holidays. He attributed the increase in the number of travellers to the South African documentation exercise, which saw many Zimbabweans working in that country acquiring permits.
“Many of our people staying and working in South Africa are now documented after they acquired authentic permits during the regularisation exercise in that country hence they could now travel freely. The documents also enabled them to drive foreign registered vehicles, which is another factor that resulted in an increase in the volume of vehicular traffic during this festive period compared to the previous years,” he said.
The South African government embarked on the process of documenting Zimbabweans illegally staying in that country between 5 May 2009 and 31 July 2010 during which over 275 000 applications from Zimbabweans were processed while several others were turned down and some are still pending.
Online Reporter