Border Management Agency ‘will be operational next year’

THE Border Management Agency (BMA), which was formed last year as a single authority to man the country’s borders, will be operational at 18 ports of entry next year.

This was announced by the Department of Home Affairs when it tabled its annual performance plan to the portfolio committee this week.

Director-general Tommy Makhode said the department would ensure that the BMA was operational by the 2023/24 financial year at 18 ports of entry, six segments of the land border law enforcement areas and one community crossing area.

Makhode said selected ports of entry would be equipped with biometric functionality by March 2024 and an automated biometric information system would be implemented in the 2022/23 financial year.

The agency was in the process of filling critical management positions. The BMA already has a commissioner, Nakampe Michael Masiapato, who was appointed last year along with his deputy David Chilembe.

Makhode said the agency was still finalising protocols with the SA Revenue Service. A lot of work was done in transferring the functions related to the Department of Agriculture and SAPS to the BMA, including identification and ring-fencing personnel, funds, assets and liabilities.

Makhode said they wanted to ensure that governance committees were established to deal with audit risk management, remuneration and human resources in the last quarter of the financial year. The BMA was allocated R120 million but it subsequently wrote to national Treasury asking for reprioritisation to start the agency’s capacitation.

Parliamentarians asked the department to provide them with regular or quarterly reports on the progress made in the establishment of the BMA.

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said there was a belief that the department was not doing anything on migration, hence groups in communities took the law into their own hands.

He said their inspectors conducted 220 operations on migration laws in the past financial year.

“We have decided, because of what is happening, to double that from 220 operations to 540,” he said.

IFP MP Liezl van der Merwe said there was a need to fix the immigration crisis in the country. “Tensions are rising. Communities rightly say the Department … fails to implement immigration laws,” she said.

Responding, Motsoaledi said an assessment of the operations was done and there was a need to completely overhaul the immigration system.