'Extend business hours at Chirundu’

Thupeyo Mleya Beitbridge Bureau
Border authorities and customs clearing agents operating at Chirundu Border Post have appealed to Government to consider extending business hours at the border as a long-term solution to the challenges that have been affecting the movement of both human
traffic and cargo. Stakeholders including the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, Immigration, VID, the police and the Shipping and Forwarding Agents’ Association of Zimbabwe agreed during a crisis meeting held at the border post last week that most of the problems at that port of entry were due to the limited opening times.
Chirundu Border Post opens for human traffic between 6am and 6pm while commercial traffic is allowed entry between 8am and 5pm.
The chaos on the country’s northern border has also been blamed on the mismatch in operating times between Chirundu and Beitbridge post, which operates 24 hours.
SFAAZ chief executive officer Mr Joseph Musariri said in an interview yesterday that the decision was arrived at in an ad hoc meeting involving various players at the border last week in the wake of delays and congestion.
He said the previous week had seen long queues of haulage trucks stretching more than five kilometres while some drivers were spending more than five days at the border post due to the short working day in which a lot of documents needed processing.
“As stakeholders we agreed that the long-term solution to the challenges at Chirundu is to let the border operate 24 hours daily. My personal take is that the border needs to open at 0600hrs and close at 2200hrs daily for commercial traffic.
“This would achieve the balance between the need to extend the operational hours and the obvious need to increase staff for both Government departments and Customs clearing agents (shortage of residential accommodation is the major challenge here).
“To achieve this, the law has to be amended and an appropriate recommendation will be made by the association,” said Mr Musariri.
He said they had noted that the main reasons for the resultant congestion included the fact that the Beira Port was becoming more popular than Durban which had also affected the truck turnaround time that has become much shorter resulting in more trips per truck.
“There has been a marked increase in truck fleets. Big truckers had more than doubled their fleet since 2011.
“Furthermore some traffic had diverted from other routes (e.g. Tete and Victoria Falls routes) in preference for Chirundu,” he said.
Mr Musariri said the limited crossing capacity of the bridge was also affecting the movement of cargo.
He said they had also noted that the difficulty in prioritising tankers and open bulk trucks before entry into the Customs Control Zone on the Zimbabwe side of the border coupled with a lack of co-ordinated approach amongst stakeholders was another factor which had turned the situation into near chaos.
He added that a number of stop-gap measures were being introduced to facilitate the speedy flow of traffic.
“Through the joint efforts of SFAAZ, Zimra, VID, ZRP and Immigration, the backlog was contained yesterday through an operation that was intensively executed on Saturday July 6.
“I had the honour of being asked by the stakeholders to chair the ‘crisis’ meetings that we had throughout the period. Ministry of Regional Integration and International Co-operation together with Ministry of Industry and Commerce officials who had visited Chirundu on a different mission were also in attendance.
“By end of day yesterday the situation had almost normalised. All trucks that arrived on Saturday had crossed the border. The remaining trucks numbered less than 50 and had arrived on the same day.
“For the record, 360 trucks (northbound) crossed the border on Saturday 6 July up from 264 that crossed on the 5th and 270 that crossed on the 4th. The average truck movements for the month of June was 223 (north bound) and 221 (south bound),” said Mr Musariri.http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86315:extend-business-hours-at-chirundu&catid=41:business&Itemid=133#.Ud0L7KxSVdg