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Thupeyo Muleya Beitbridge Bureau
The Parliamentary Thematic Committee on Human Rights has embarked on a countrywide tour to assess the confirming of police holding cells at selected border posts for conformity with international human rights standards.

The team which is chaired by Senator Chief Makumbe (Shepard Chengeta) visited Featherstone and Ngundu Police Station on Thursday before touring Beitbridge Border Post and Gwanda Police Station on Friday.

In an interview in Beitbridge, Senator Makumbe said they will also visit Plumtree Border Post

“Basically we came here to interrogate human rights related issues in relation to accused persons caught on the wrong side of the law at this border,” he said.

“We have observed that they have a process which they follow in order to deal with the rights of the accused persons.

“They have explained a lot to our team and we have taken on board their concerns and areas that need improvement here and there.

“We will discuss about these issues when we get back to Parliament. In short we can say, we are very satisfied with what we have seen and been given relating to what they do when they come across accused persons at this border.”

Chief Makumbe added that although they were satisfied with the current operations at Beitbridge, there was a need for the border authority to undergo periodic trainings on modern human rights practices.

He said it was important for the ports of entries to be aligned in line with modern international standards.

“We are a border post, we have got obviously international travellers some of whom are very conversant with the current trend in as far as human rights related issues are concerned.

“This then calls for the need for a lot of training and retraining of stakeholders,” said Chief Makumbe.

He said their findings so far at Featherstone and Ngundu police stations pointed to an urgent need to upgrade infrastructure at mots police stations countrywide.

He said most buildings had become obsolete since most of them had not been repaired or upgrade for a long time.

“We need to look at our infrastructure seriously. You will note that this infrastructure has not been repaired or upgraded in a very long time.

“Our recommendations as a committee are that such key infrastructure be looked at in order for to be aligned to the current trends and human rights practices,” said Chief Makombe.

Speaking during the same tour, Assistant Regional immigration officer-in-charge of Beitbridge Mr Nqobile Ncube said their workers periodically went through human rights issues under the social services cluster.

Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) acting regional manager (Beitbridge), Mrs Tendai Muchuchuti told the committee that: “As part of our quest to improve on service delivery, our officers are trained on special client care skills for them to be able to deal with people with varied attitudes.”