A 24-hour border post with a 12-hour curfew for the country it serves – that, in a nutshell, sums up the situation at Beitbridge where trucks are queueing for kilometres into South Africa because of slow processing issues in Zimbabwe.
Reasons for Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) only processing a limited number of trucks an hour are manifold: the privately run container depo (condep) for customs checks north of the border is packed to capacity and does not operate 24/7 to coincide with the border post operating hours, trucks are filling up the customs yard, application of electronic seals takes too long, and trucks requiring physical examinations have to wait for escorts between customs and condep.
It all adds up to a recipe for congestion.
Now, following yesterday’s announcement of the 6pm-6am curfew, the slow chug of traffic through Zimra’s facility has been slowed even more, especially because the Documents Processing Centre (DPC) is only working 12 hours a day.
“In other words you have a 24-hour border with the DPC only running for half that,” said Mike Fitzmaurice, chief executive of the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations (Fesarta).
As usual, if systems and services on one side of a border fail the expected flow of freight, it causes a backlog on the other side of the crossing, in this case affecting northbound cargo.
Earlier Fitzmaurice said Zimra was currently only managing about 30 trucks and hour, yet around 1000 trucks head to that border every day.
At the going rate it means only some 360 trucks are processed and cleared daily, while more and more trucks join the growing queue.
But it’s nothing new for trucks south of Beitbridge to wait on the shoulder of the road, head to heel, all the way south to Musina.
Recently the queue was more than 12 kilometres long.
If Zimra persists with the current rate of processing, the queue is expected to grow even longer soon.
And as they wait for their turn to cross the Limpopo, long-distance drivers have to camp in their cabins, exposed to criminals preying on them like sitting ducks.
Last night a driver became one of the victims, robbed of cash and personal items including his passport, effectively terminating his journey on the North South Corridor.
At the time this report was posted, Fitzmaurice was liaising with Zimra on an ongoing basis, asking that the situation be remedied.
When he heard from them just before 2pm, Zimra said the situation at the DPC centres was being addressed with government. But in view of the curfew introduced yesterday as an emergency restriction to curb the spread of the virus they had no choice but to comply. They are appealing the ruling to allow DPC to continue working 24 hours but can give no time frame to the resolution of the situation.
