If and when the SA Revenue Service (Sars) and the Border Management Authority (BMA) will be deploying urgent contingency measures at South Africa’s Groblersbrug Border Post (GBR) with Botswana remains anyone’s guess.
A cargo agent who spoke to Freight News on condition of anonymity, said the build-up of overflow traffic diverting to the Kopfontein crossing further south of GBR is so bad that a North West Stakeholders meeting on Wednesday morning even discussed the involvement of Botswana’s President, Duma Boko.
“The situation is very serious,” the source said.
“We may not have 21-kilometre queues any more, but authorities are battling to cope.”
He added that the meeting focused on the possibility of Sars rolling out 24-hour customs processing until the backlog of cross-border cargo processing had been eased.
It comes after the revenue collector said on Tuesday that emergency measures were afoot to assist the freight industry with supply chain into and through Botswana.
The source said the idea that GBR, used primarily for in-transit cargo from South Africa through Botswana to the Copperbelt, should fall back on manual processes for the time being was “easier said than done”.
“Remember that a lot of cargo destined for that border (GBR) has been pre-cleared and, because of the collapse of electronic facilities, cannot be processed.
“If a truck with a load has been cleared to ‘proceed to border’, how is Sars supposed to proceed with acquittal when it doesn’t have the digital means to do so?”
But the accommodation of allowing pre-cleared in-transit loads to use Kopfontein instead has wreaked havoc on a border used for express cargo heading to Gaborone, hence talks of Boko getting involved himself.
“It’s a real problem at the moment,” the source said.
“And yes, although the bridge at GBR is open (following recent flooding of the Limpopo), we must remember that there is no power. It’s not that simple to say that just because we can get across the river we should revert back to manual processing. Doing that could break the whole chain of cargo processing and clearing is a little more complicated than that.”
He admitted, though, that the road freight industry had reason to be dissatisfied with the apparent inability of Sars and the BMA to deploy contingency measures in times of crisis.
“We should have learned by now from what we have seen at borders like Lebombo (on the N4 Corridor to the Port of Maputo).”
“We know that it’s also not just Sars that’s at fault but also the BMA, but that doesn’t matter. The fact remains, they should be working together to accommodate industry when urgent situations occur.”
