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Thupeyo Muleya Beitbridge Bureau
The volume of people coming into the country from South Africa through the Beitbridge Border Post has relatively increased as Zimbabweans troop back for the Christmas and New Year holidays. In the last five days, the Department of Immigration has on average cleared 3 000 travellers on arrivals and 10 000 on departures. When The Herald crew visited the border post in the last two days, there were short and moving queues with travellers spending less than 30 minutes to complete all the border formalities, including immigration and customs.
The speedy clearance has been attributed mainly to a change in movement trends and contingent measures put in place by border authorities. The assistant regional immigration officer in charge of Beitbridge Border Post, Mr Notius Tarisai said they cleared a total of 70 423 people on arrivals between December 10 and 14.
“Since the beginning of December to December 14, we cleared a total of 476 013 on both arrivals and departures. “We are fully geared for the influx in traffic through our border. We anticipate the numbers to increase by the end of this week,” said Mr Tarisai.
“We have a full strength of 80 officers and have come up with a raft of measures to ensure a smooth flow of traffic”. Mr Tarisai said they have separated traffic into buses, private, commercial vehicles, visitors, transit and returning residents. He said they will open up more clearing points depending on the pressure on the ground.
He added that last year they cleared a total of 1,188 million people in December alone. “We recorded a total of 471 895 entries and 716 966 exits for the whole of December in 2014,” he said.
He said they had agreed to harmonise operations with their South African counterparts. The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority has also beefed up its staff at Beitbridge. The South African Home Affairs department also deployed 78 relief staff to Beitbridge Border Post with effect from December 10 to January 14 next year.
Online Reporter