Border Management Authority (BMA) Commissioner Dr Michael Masiapato has confirmed that the deployment of advanced technology at South Africa’s busiest land crossings has been “very positive,” helping to monitor and manage the movement of people during the Easter operations.
This comes after thousands of people were intercepted attempting to cross illegally into South Africa at the Beitbridge border post.
Masiapato said the authority’s use of drones and amphibian vehicles has had a clear deterrent effect.
“People are really aware that we are actually watching them, firstly through the drones, but secondly, even with the amphibian vehicle that we have just demonstrated now. That is one of the most critical deterrents in this part,” he said.
Masiapato provided detailed figures on the daily flow of travellers, highlighting the scale of operations across key border posts.
“If you were to look at the numbers, over the last 24 hours, OR Tambo still led with around 25,000. Lebombo and another top port processed around 25,700 individuals each.
”From there, Beitbridge handled around 21,000, while other ports like Ficksburg Bridge and Maseru Bridge recorded around 18,000. These are the kind of numbers we have actually processed in the last 24 hours,” he explained.
The commissioner said the data reflects the success of the authority’s festive season operations.
“We are very much confident that we’ve been able to do what we’re supposed to do in terms of this operation.
”We will aggregate all the figures as we close the operation officially on Thursday, 9 April, and we should be able to then give a full report back in terms of how everything had unfolded,” Masiapato added.
hope.ntanzi@iol.co.za
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