Pretoria - Chairperson of the Parliament portfolio committee on home affairs Bongani Bongo, yesterday called for urgent intervention regarding the movement of people and trucks through the country’s borders, especially Beitbridge.
The border post has been congested all week, with very little movement for people wanting to cross to Zimbabwe and beyond.
Bongo said: “While we understand the need for stringent health checks necessitated by Covid-19, we are also cognisant of the strategic importance of the Beitbridge crossing to trade in Africa.
“It is in this context that strategies should have been put in place to mitigate such an occurrence, especially in relation to reducing operating hours.”
Bongo emphasised that it was necessary at this juncture for the Department of Home Affairs together with sister departments operating at ports of entry, to develop and implement emergency strategies that would alleviate the congestion.
He said the congestion had also highlighted the urgent need to operationalise the Border Management Agency which would improve the agility in dealing with such situations in future.
“But we remain cognisant of the need to ensure efforts of slowing down the spread of Covid-19 are strengthened, thus those intervention plans must incorporate Covid-19 mitigation strategies,” he said.
He said central to the call for mitigating strategies was the need to find a workable balance between ensuring reasonable ease of movement of people across the border, ease of movement of goods to enable trade and ensuring that the goal of reducing transmission of the disease was achieved.
Bongo emphasised that he was hopeful that the South African government would move with speed to deal with the challenges faced at the border crossings.
In Pretoria, Bosman and Marabastad had long queues of last-minute travellers prepared to make their way out of the city.
People were loading large and small luggage like furniture, food, building materials and bicycles into the trailers of buses that were ready to take people outside South Africa.
MEC for Transport and Roads Infrastructure Jacob Mamabolo and manager of the Bosman Bus Station Matshepo Sekwala, said this was still a smaller number of travellers compared to previous year, something they attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic on people’s finances.
Innocent and Brenda Moyo, who were travelling to Zimbabwe yesterday, said they were ready for the trip even though it would take a while because of the numerous stops, slow moving traffic and the fact that luggage had to be searched for contraband at the border gates.
“I just want to be home with my three daughters and our parents; we come to South African to work, but home is where the heart is. One of our daughters is starting school next year so we have no choice but to go home even if we didn’t make money this year.”
Pretoria News