Economic activities to be removed from border posts

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Economic activities to be removed from border posts

8:23 CAT | 27 Dec 2017

Mozambique’s Deputy Minister of the Interior, Helena Kida, has announced the government’s intention of removing all economic activities from border posts, which will be reserved exclusively for the institutions involved in the cross-frontier movement of people and goods – namely the immigration authorities, the customs service and the frontier guard.

Kida was speaking on Sunday, during a visit to Ressano Garcia on the border between Mozambique and South Africa. This is by far the busiest of the country’s border posts in the Xmas and New Year holiday period.

Kida said the government bodies at the border have been given instructions to rapidly move economic services away from the border posts, since they have nothing to do with customs or immigration work.

The economic activities, she said, should move a short distance into Ressano Garcia town. This instruction affects branches of banks, insurance companies and mobile phone operators, for example. She wanted to “liberate” the border post of these services so that it could devote itself entirely to its main function, that of cross-border movement.

She also wanted to ban self-styled “facilitators” who infest the border posts offering to “assist” travellers, but in reality extorting money from them. These people promise to ensure, for a fee, of course, that passports are stamped, and that those who pay them can jump the queue.

Kida said she knew that the “facilitators” often work in coordination with corrupt immigration staff. “This situation weakens our work”, she said. “We have to get rid of these “facilitators” who in reality just create more confusion”.

The formal banks and stalls of phone companies do not, in fact, create any serious headaches for the authorities or for travellers. The real bane of Ressano Garcia are the throngs of informal sellers, attempting to persuade travellers to buy overpriced beer or coca-cola, or illegally changing meticais into South African rands or vice versa.

Kida made it clear that she wanted them gone from the border posts too, and demanded that the police take “tough measures” against them, particularly against the informal currency dealers.

She stressed that money must not be sold in the public highway, but in authorised places such as banks and foreign exchange bureaux.

“This activity favours swindlers”, she pointed out. “A passenger in transit risks buying forged bank notes. And once he’s returned to his bus, he can’t go back to recover his money, and has nowhere to complain”.

She promised that all the informal currency dealers will be removed from the vicinity of the border posts in order to restore order.

Source: AIM