teething problems persist at Chirundu

There have been significant teething problems at the Chirundu one-stop border post between Zambia and Zimbabwe – many of them nationalistic in nature, according to Barney Curtis, executive officer of the Federation of Southern African Road Transport Associations (Fesarta). The Chirundu Bridge consists of two road bridges side by side across the 400-metre-wide Zambezi River between the small town of Chirundu, Zambia and the village of Chirundu, Zimbabwe. The bridges carry the Harare to Lusaka section of the Great North Road, which extends between SA and East Africa. The post opened on December 6, Curtis told FTW, but has faced rather a lot of troubles in its first five months. “Many of them,” he added, “have been because it has been the first one- stop concept operating in southern Africa.” Apart from technical hitches, Curtis attributed a lot of the hassles to “mindset”. “This,” he said, “is where you have the officials from both Zambian and Zimbabwean customs authorities working in the close confines of the same offices at the post – nationalistic differences on issues can, and do, occur.”