Immigration ready for holiday influx

Wednesday, 06 April 2011 21:32

By Thupeyo Muleya The Immigration Department is geared to handle the expected influx of human and vehicular traffic expected to pass through Beitbridge Border Post during the Easter Holiday. In an interview yesterday, immigration Officer-in-Charge (operations) at Beitbridge, Mrs Tamari Shadaya, said they would employ some of the clearance systems they used during Christmas last year to deal with the traffic surge. Mrs Shadaya said they had agreed in principal with their South African counterparts to align clearance of people and vehicles. "At the moment, we are operating on four shifts and with effect from April 18 until the end of Easter we will suspend all off and leave days. "We have staff complement of 55 and we need an extra 15 to operate at full strength. "Immigration officials from Zimbabwe and South Africa have agreed to implement a similar clearance programme to ensure the speedy flow of traffic. "The police and other stakeholders will also be engaged to ensure maintenance of order and providing marshals at all clearing points. "More immigration clearing points will be opened outside the main immigration hall if the need arises." She said more security guards would be deployed at all entry and exit points to ensure travellers' safety. Mrs Shadaya said they would separate traffic into pedestrians, buses, commercial, tourists and private motorists. Presently, all are cleared at the same counters. Mrs Shadaya said they had devised a tagging system of clearing passengers in buses in their order of arrival to decongest the border post. "On average, we clear between 1 500 and 2 000 people per day and about 15 000 during holidays. "We anticipate the number to drastically increase this time around taking into account that a lot of people did not come back home during the festive season. "Many were still regularising their stay in South Africa and most of them were successful. These people would probably want to visit their relatives during Easter." Mrs Shadaya said that they had recorded a decline in people enter-ing the country through Beitbridge in the first quarter of 2011 as compared to the same period last year. "During the period under review, last year we had a total of 1 039 594 people who used Beitbridge Border Post as compared to 661 572 this year." www.herald.co.zw