Junior guards to be deployed at ports of entry ahead of Easter weekend

The Border Management Authority will deploy 400 additional junior border guards at the busiest ports of entry over Easter.

The junior guards who will complete their training in the next few weeks will assist with delivering services and providing law enforcement support. 

Border Management Authority commissioner Michael Masiapato outlined the plan to increase security control at ports of entry over Easter at a media briefing on Monday.

The 400 guards who were recruited early last year had started training in the middle of 2023, he said, and were scheduled to finish their training in the coming few weeks. They would have a passing-out parade next month and then be fully deployed. 

“Their core area of work is purely border law enforcement that they are going to be doing,” Masiapato said. 

The junior guards would intensify access control across the entries into the port environment and make sure that all people who entered the port were legitimate travellers carrying the requisite travel documents.

“This is purely the main function, they are not going to be doing port health function. They are not going to be doing agricultural biosecurity work. They are also not going to be doing environmental biosecurity work. They are going to assist us with immigration-related work and this one is purely on the use of the biometric movement control system and they had all the requisite training that is required for them to be able to assist us,” Masiapato said. 

Most of the additional border guards would be deployed at Beitbridge, Lebombo, Ficksburg, Maseru Bridge, Telle Bridge, Kosi Bay and Groblers Bridge.

Masiapato said as was the case in December and January, previous trends had shown that the Easter period also experienced increased travel and trade activities across ports of entry and the border law enforcement area.

The Border Management Authority is mandated to facilitate and manage the legitimate movements of people and goods across all 52 land ports of entry, 10 international airports and nine seaports.

Masiapato said the Easter operational plan was supported by law enforcement structures including police, the SA Revenue Service, the SA National Defence Force, the Cross Border Road Transport Agency and traffic authorities.

The commissioner said that during the 2023 Easter period which ran for eight days, the authority facilitated about 913,859 people across ports of entry. The authority is anticipating about 1- million people moving through the ports this Easter.

“The numbers for this year’s Easter period could escalate further as members of the Zion Christian Church (ZCC), one of our biggest churches in the region, is opening for the annual Easter pilgrimage to Moria for the first time since Covid-19.”

He said the statistics for the 2023 Easter period, showed the ports of entry which facilitated the majority of the people were Beitbridge to Zimbabwe, Lebombo to Mozambique, Groblers Bridge to Botswana, Maseru Bridge and Ficksburg to Lesotho, OR Tambo International Airport, Cape Town International Airport, Oshoek to Eswatini, Kopfontein to Botswana and Caledonspoort to Lesotho.