Border chaos cleared ahead of the Easter and Uhuru holidays

Thupeyo Muleya, Beitbridge Bureau
BORDER authorities at Beitbridge have cleared congestion at the port of entry that saw trucks experiencing delays of between two and three days to access Zimbabwe and South Africa last week.

Commercial cargo started piling up at Sadc’s busiest inland port on Wednesday morning after South Africa temporarily closed its component of the port of entry due to a water supply crisis.

The water woes have dogged the South Africans since June last year following a fault on a major supply line. Things got to a head last week when construction workers downed tools protesting the non-payment of salaries for more than three months.

The company contracted to fix the water crisis at Beitbridge has been playing hide and seek with its employers resulting in the water crisis escalating.

Long queues of commercial vehicles that had become common along the N1 highway (South Africa) and the Beitbridge to Bulawayo Highway, were cleared over the weekend.

Authorities said yesterday that they were now focusing on enhancing the smooth flow of traffic during the forthcoming Easter and Independence holidays between 15 April and 18 April.

By the end of the day yesterday the border had been reopened, but without water with the South Africans having to make use of mobile toilets.

Trucks carrying priority goods and those with empty trailers were getting first preference to move across the border.
Zimborders Consortium, chief executive officer, Mr Francois Diedrechsen, who are now managing the new freight terminal at the port of entry said the situation had returned to normalcy.

“Our team working together with other Government agencies managed to clear the long queues over the weekend and traffic is now flowing smoothly again,” he said.

“The focus now is on the anticipated surge in non-commercial traffic in the next two weeks.

“With the Phase 2 (buses terminal) not complete as yet it means we will have to do more to ensure a speedy flow of traffic within the available space, working together with other border actors”.

The Regional Immigration officer (RIO) in-charge-of- Beitbridge, Mr Joshua Chibundu said they were ready to clear any surge in human and vehicular traffic.

He said they had deployed enough vaccinated manpower to ensure a smooth flow of traffic at the same time enforcing compliance issues to prevent crime and irregular migration.

Mr Chibundu said the volume of traffic through the port of entry was gradually rising and that adjustments to operations will be made depending on the situation on the ground.

“As immigration, we are ready, however our fear might be limited parking space due to ongoing construction works within the border, but we will continue working with all the stakeholders to address the bottlenecks.

“So far, human traffic has started peaking from 3 500 people daily to 5 000 soon after restrictions on ordinary travel were reviewed,” he added. – @tupeyo.