Umamah Bakharia | ub@radioislam.co.za

2 min read
25 December 2022 | 08:00 am CAT

Border Management Authority (BMA) has reported that more than 20 000 immigrants have crossed the Beitbridge border post from Musina, Limpopo, into Zimbabwe in the past 24 hours.

Photo credit: IOL

The port of entry into Zimbabwe has been one of the busiest in processing travellers since the festive season started, with BMA senior officials monitoring the implementation of border law enforcement at the post.

However, based on the footage, immigrants are not spending nights in the queue before being processed, unlike in previous years when travellers can be seen waiting at the border to be processed.

According to the BMA, this year’s festive season has seen more than 20 000 immigrants have been processed travelling towards Zimbabwe between Friday and Saturday afternoon.

BMA commissioner Dr Mike Masiapato says the Beitbridge Border Post is experiencing more people crossing than other ports of entry.

“We always have challenges where during load shedding the system is always going down. This time we make sure that we have expert on the ground, so the capacity is here, additional capacity. I can indicate that the average we are able to process over a period is about 15 000. Last, we have processed over 14 000 and up to this point we processed over 8 000 trucks. We processed about 600 in a 24-hour bases,” he says.

Meanwhile, traffic is still heavily congested on the N1 road between Musina and the Beitbridge border post.