At least 20 000 travellers crossed from South Africa into Zimbabwe at the Beitbridge Border Post in Musina, Limpopo, from the 23rd to the 24th of December, according to the Border Management Authority (BMA).
Unlike in the past years, travellers were not spending nights in the queue before being processed.
BMA commissioner Mike Masiapato says the Beitbridge Border Post is experiencing a high number of people crossing than other ports of entry. He said:
Inside the port, all the process is up and running in terms of the ICT or the computers.
We always have challenges where during load shedding the system is always going down.
This time we make sure that we have experts on the ground, so the capacity is here, additional capacity.
I can indicate that the average we are able to process over a period is about 15 000.
Last, we have processed over 14 000 and up to this point, we processed over 8 000 trucks. We processed about 600 in a 24-hour basis.
People who were crossing to the Zimbabwean side at Beitbridge Border Post from South Africa commended border officials for improving services. One of the travellers said:
The service at the border, I just arrived now but it’s moving. I hope we are going to reach home in time.
Me, I would clap for immigration because there are no queues. These guys are well-organised. It is moving 100%; I give them a clap.
However, traffic was heavily congested on the N1 road between Musina, a town in South Africa, and the border post. | SABC News