Trucks travelling northwest on the N11 towards Martin's Drift Border Post in Botswana, continue to back up into South Africa at the Groblersbrug Border Post, cross-border hauliers have told the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Operators (Fesarta).
According to the association's chief executive, Mike Fesarta, a problem with the online network on Botswana's side of the Limpopo crossing has resulted in border officials struggling to clear the backlog.
At this stage, it’s not known when officials will catch up with the demand for cargo processing, which has slowed since systems went down on Tuesday.
Since the Kazungula Bridge across the Zambezi River up north opened for traffic, replacing the necessity for trucks to cross the Botswana-Zambia border by ferry, the "Groblersburg crossing" as it is commonly known, has seen a marked increase in volume.
Back then, Leslie Mpofu, executive director of the Trans-Kalahari Corridor Secretariat, warned that Groblersbrug wouldn’t keep pace with the expected increase in volume due to improvements at Kazungula.
He pointed out that cross-border links are all part of an integrated system that, ideally, should be upgraded simultaneously if Sub-Saharan countries want to harmonise borders for faster trade flows.
Whereas Groblersburg once received about 200 trucks daily, volume at the crossing has doubled since Kazungula transformed movement across the Zambezi.
According to Fitzmaurice, Groblersbrug cannot handle such volumes, especially on the Botswana side where the customs yard is too small and fills up very quickly, causing trucks to back up on South Africa's side of the border.
Apart from obvious shortcomings, such as the single-lane bridge across the river, the border posts should really be moved away from the river, he said.
"In the rainy season, the Limpopo's level rises very quickly, flooding the border. They should move the border posts further back and build staging areas to handle more traffic.
"A wider bridge in time would also help to speed up transits, but it is not known whether that is on the cards."
Just before Freight News was ready to go live with this post, Fitzmaurice told members of Fesarate's Transit Assist Group: "There are still a lot of trucks queuing on the N11, and I understand truck parks are full.
"So there's still a major backlog on the South African side with limited space in the Bots yard causing slow progress."
