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Zimbabweans Repatriated From Mozambique
Some six illegal Zimbabwean migrants are repatriated every week through the post of Machipanda, a senior government official said Monday in Maputo.
The Manica district administrator, Paulo Madjamane, told reporters that "many Zimbabweans have been caught violating the border to come and trade in Mozambique", because of the current political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, 69 Mozambicans were repatriated from Zimbabwe, through the Machipanda post, about a month ago.
Madjamane said about 300 Mozambicans have been repatriated from Zimbabwe in four operations so far this year, adding these operations were carried out in coordination with the Mozambican High Commission in Harare.
He said that with the new procedures, the deportees, when released from prison, are accompanied to the Machipanda border by a Mozambican official from the High Commission.
Madjamane commented that one of the main reasons for the presence of illegal Zimbabweans in Mozambique is the thriving trade in contraband sugar, adding the central Manica district authorities have been striving to check this activity.
"We had to launch this operation because smuggling was intensifying by the day along the Machipanda border and along the Beira Corridor, where tax evasion seems a normal activity", he said.
The administrator explained that other products are also smuggled, but sugar is the most important, because one sees, at night, dozens of trucks loaded with sugar for sale in various Mozambicans cities.
Some contraband goes the other way, thus there is substantial smuggling of kerosene from Mozambique to Zimbabwe.
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