Eighteen border guards have been discharged from their duties and a further 30 face disciplinary charges since the Border Management Authority (BMA) started operations last year in April, Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Leon Schreiber, has said.
Answering questions posed to him by IFP Member of Parliament Liezl van der Merwe, Schreiber said the dismissals had been for bribery and corruption, a complaint regularly aired by cross-border transporters working out of or entering South Africa.
Schreiber said the 400 additional personnel that had been deployed to the various points of entry since the BMA officially commenced policing the country’s land borders had helped to curb crime by the state.
He said to date the BMA had processed 57 cases against border personnel, resulting in 18 dismissals and two month-long suspensions without pay for transgressors.
The disciplinary hearings currently under way are expected to be finalised at the end of October.
The BMA has also identified several border crossings where they will collaborate with various counter-corruption bodies to stem the tide of foreign nationals illegally entering South Africa.
Although South Africa’s Beitbridge and Lebombo transits with Zimbabwe and Mozambique are not mentioned, it is understood that they top the list of red-flagged zones where illegal crossings continue unabated.
Schreiber said the complete implementation of a biometrics control system across the entire network of 71 land border crossings was expected to aid the fight against illegal immigration into South Africa.
He said these modernisation processes of passport control were currently under way.
However, serious disparities between the number of staff responsible for capturing traveller information and the flow of traffic through certain borders are playing havoc with processing borders such as Groblersbrug between South Africa and Botswana (see related “BMA” story).
