Congestion at the Chirundu border post between Zambia and Zimbabwe has reached record highs as Customs official’s battle outdated clearing systems to keep traffic moving.At the last count, trucks were stranded in 10km queues waiting to cross into Zambia.
“There is complete mismanagement at the borders. You just have to see the congestion and the unauthorised people in the border areas to appreciate that this is not how you run a border,” an industry source told FTW.
He placed most of the blame on the Zambian Revenue Authority (ZR A), citing its clearing system failures and ongoing misdeclaration of cargo as the main reasons for the backlog. “They tried to do a systems upgrade recently and the entire platform collapsed. They then managed to get the old Asycuda System up and running and clearing on that, but it is very slow.” Making matters worse, he said, was the issue of smuggling.
“The ZR A seems to have lost complete control. A few weeks ago they halted all transit loads through Zambia, which has had a serious impact on transport revenue.”
One of the means of addressing smuggling and misdeclaration is the use of scanners, but according to the source, the equipment at Chirundu is outdated and ineffective which causes more congestion and delays.
“They take approximately 10 minutes to scan a vehicle, yet vehicles are arriving at the border faster than this. If the scanners go down, they take more than an hour to reboot.” Something that could ease the congestion would be preclearance, but this is not happening for south-bound exports. “Once a truck travels from Zambia into Zimbabwe it first needs to be inspected by a ZRA official who only starts the clearing process once the truck arrives in Chirundu,” he said.
“And ZRA is known to impound cars for the most minute reasons, which has pushed operators away from the border. “After impounding for a week, they apologise and release the equipment, which comes at a huge cost to the transporter. Customers, many of whom are large international companies, do not want to be associated with this kind of behaviour.” With the world now focused on trying to contain the spread of the coronavirus, not much is expected to change with regard to the congestion over the coming weeks and months.
