adminCOURIER firms operating in Zimbabwe are recording low business volumes due to various challenges, chiefly competition from unregistered players who do not have to go through the cumbersome border processes, an official has said. DHL Express Zimbabwe country manager Jeff Phiri said most of their clients were now shunning registered courier firms in favour of unregistered transporters. Phiri said the unregistered operators included bus and truck drivers who travel between South Africa and Zimbabwe, commonly known locally as “malayitsha.” He said customers were turning to unregistered operators mainly because of the time it takes to process and acquire export authorisation from the government.
“One of our challenges is the CD1 forms, the export control forms, that we need to complete. The voice of the customer is very clear, they are finding it cumbersome to wait to process the CD1 forms. It can take anything from two days to a month while they’re waiting but the world right now can’t wait,” he said. “People just go to the runners because it’s convenient, it’s quick.” Phiri added; “The players have made a point, they’ve said there are people who aren’t regulated. It’s unfair to us, we’re regulated, we follow the laws of the country, we’re compliant but then we get the malayitsha who aren’t registered.”
A FedEx official, Steve Mannion concurred with Phiri that registered operators had witnessed a decline in courier business in the past few years.
He said most of the illegal transportation was happening at the Beit Bridge border post between Zimbabwe and South Africa.
“A lot of our clients are actually going through the informal channel deploying runners to South Africa and that has had an impact on our business. Over the last two or three years we’ve seen a much more significant uptake and demand by customers using those sort of channels,” he said.
Courier Connect internal auditor Shepherd Musonza called on the government to come up with a framework to regulate the unregistered transporters. “Most of these people who’re involved in this smuggling are the malayitshas who aren’t licensed and currently there’s no regulation regulating their operations so the authorities should do something to regulate them,” he said. – New Ziana
Online Reporter