MORE than 15 000 people were caught trying to enter South Africa illegally during the festive season.
This was announced by the commissioner of Border Management Authority (BMA), Dr Mike Masiapato, who was reporting on feedback of festive season operations during a media briefing in Tshwane on Sunday, 28 January.
Masiapato said BMA managed to facilitate the legitimate movement of about 5 096 288 travellers across their 71 ports of entry between 6 December 2023 and 18 Janauary 2024.
“This number represent an increase of one million travellers compared to the 2022/2023 number of four million travellers. However, this number of travellers is still one million less to the pre-Covid average numbers of about six million travellers,” he said.
He said although their primary job as BMA is to facilitate the legitimate movement of people, they also have to deal with individuals who attempt to illegitimately move through their ports of entry and border law enforcement areas.
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“In this festive period we were able to detect about 15 924 individuals who were attempting to enter into South Africa without requisite documentation through our ports and vulnerable segments of the borderline,” he said.
“After intercepting them, we took their fingerprints, declared them undesirable and banned them from re-entering South African for a period of five years and keep the record in the Biometric Movement Control System and got them deported,” he said.
He said they remain concerned about some public transporters who continue to consciously transport illegal migrants across their ports of entry and border law enforcement areas.
“During this period, we imposed about 98 administrative fines to various conveyancers, especially bus companies to the value of R3 540 000 for transporting illegal migrants at the cost of R15 000 per person as per Section 50 (3) of the Immigration Act of 2002. At the same time, we were able to collect about R9,8 million in outstanding fines from about 25 bus companies,” he said.
He said they would like to acknowledge the outcry of South Africans on the challenges associated with illegal migration into South Africa.
“As such, we have started intensive conversations with the various stakeholders including our neighbouring countries to help us in addressing this scourge,” he said.
