Chronic understaffing is one of the most important reasons why South Africa’s Groblersbrug Border Post into Botswana tends to bottleneck, causing cross-border cargo operators to queue on the N11, often for days.
In a frank interview with Freight News, Border Management Authority (BMA) commissioner, Dr Michael Masiapato, said they could barely manage to station three immigration officers at the crossing at any given time, let alone deploy border guards.
“It’s a fundamental problem that we have, and there’s no funding to address this at the moment. We simply do not have the money to appoint more people.”
Masiapato added that although it was the BMA’s mandate to police borders inside a 10-kilometre radius, there were no personnel available for this function, despite truck congestion on the N11 often leading to crime in the queue.
“The BMA in terms of law enforcement has no presence at Groblersbrug,” said Masiapato.
“That is the unfortunate reality.”
The commissioner stressed that since the BMA’s inception on April 21, they were supposed to have integrated about 5 000 police officers as border guards, but this had never happened.
Asked why, he said it was because of “political reasons”.
An amount of R2 billion related to this integration is still with the SA Police Service (SAPS) but has been referred to Parliament.
“It’s our hope that if this money is released by the SAPS to the BMA, we can address the shortfalls we’re experiencing at the moment,” said Masiapato.
He added that hold-ups between the two law enforcement agencies had to do with the current Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System.
Masiapato said the BMA was currently only employing about 2 600 people while it should really have about 11 200 staffers to ensure proper processing at and policing of the country’s 70-plus borders.
“In terms of capacity we’re operating on about 25% of our requirement; that’s how serious it is.”
But staffing isn’t the only reason why the BMA battles to meet demand at Groblersbrug, an important crossing for cargo carriers bypassing Zimbabwe through Botswana en route to mines in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In addition to insufficient personnel deployment, the BMA is using the Enhanced Movement Control System, designed initially for the FIFA World Cup in 2010.
“It’s outdated and no longer suitable,” Masiapato said, adding that poor bandwidth north-west of Lephalale, the resulting lack of digital service delivery in a remote area, and the infrastructural legacy challenges of a single bridge that was never designed for high-volume truck traffic, contributed to congestion at Groblersbrug.
- The information presented here is drawn from a wider conversation with Masiapato, and additional material will be released in the coming days.
