Traffic surges at Beitbridge as more vaccinated travellers use the border

Thupeyo Muleya Beitbridge Bureau

The volume of travellers has in the last three weeks been increasing through Beitbridge border post after the government lifted restrictions on non-essential travel.

A few weeks ago, the Cabinet approved the opening for land borders to fully vaccinated travellers.

Previously one required a PCR negative certificate to access the country’s ports of entry and exit.

Under the new order, only travellers with valid travel documents and fully vaccinate with the World health Organisation (WHO) approved vaccines are eligible to travel in and out of Zimbabwe.

Those who are not fully vaccinated are still required to produce a PCR negative certificate valid for not more than 48 hours to enter Zimbabwe.

For travellers entering South Africa, the PCR negative certificate should be valid for not more than 72 hours.

Beitbridge’s Regional Immigration in-charge, Mr Joshua Chibundu said although the traffic was gradually increasing, the situation was still manageable.

He said they made enough deployment of vaccinate staff, to clear traffic during the current Easter and Independence Holidays.

“The figures of people crossing the border daily has increased from an average of 3500 to 5000.

We anticipate the figures to increase further with more people starting to comply with the new Covid19 travel protocol,” he said.

Mr Chibundu said they were also working with other security agencies in enforcing compliance to minimise crime and the irregular movement of people between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

The two countries, border authorities have been running a joint security operation to curb crime at the border, with an average of 100 people being arrested during peak periods like weekends.

The official said adjustments to operations at the port of entry and exit where being made depending on the situation on the ground.

Zimborders Consortium’s Chief executive officer, Mr Francois Diedrechsen said recently that they were working with other borer stakeholders to make the flow of traffic seamless.

The consortium is currently modernising the border at a cost of US$300 million under a 17 and half year Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) concession with the government of Zimbabwe.

“The project is being carried out in three phases which include ICT, roads and New Freight terminal (Phase 1), buses terminal (Phase 2) and the light vehicles terminal and out of port works (Phase 3).

Already efficiency issues are improving following the completion of Phase 1, and now we are busy on Phase 2 which will be completed at the end of June. Phase 3 will be completed in November this year,” he said.

In separate interviews, travellers said yesterday that the separation of traffic into buses, commercial and light motor vehicles had started paying dividends.

“We are hopeful that things will get even better when the whole project is completed. What we are seeing on the ground is exciting,” said a Zambian trucker, Mr John Bulaya.

Another traveller, identified only as Mai Tino said it was pleasing to note that most motorists were now spending less time at the border under the current set up, provided they had all the necessary documents. @tupeyo