They are using Zimbabwe as a transit route as they seek to
reach markets including South Africa, China and India.
It has emerged too that Zimbabweans have also become
conduits of international drug trafficking syndicates.
Some of the drugs are sold in the country and mostly in
affluent suburbs and nightclubs, authorities have said.
Of late, law enforcement agents have been arresting some
locals transporting hard drugs such as cocaine and crystal meth.
The country is on a drive to arrest the rising drug problem
and yesterday an inter-ministerial Taskforce on Drug Abuse and Substance Abuse
held a stakeholder meeting at the airport to assess its preparedness to detect
the trafficking of drugs into the country.
Zimbabwe is facing an increasing drug problem and the
Government recently launched a National Drug Policy to arrest the rising
problem which is mostly affecting youths.
Addressing members of the Bulawayo provincial and national
inter-ministerial Taskforce on Drug Abuse and Substance Abuse at the airport,
Acting Regional Immigration Officer Mr Lucky Matyora said his department
profiles travellers and has established that most drug traffickers come from
West Africa, South America and the Middle East as they use Zimbabwe route in
drug trafficking.
“We also want to look at drug routes, this is an
international airport, of late we are having traffic coming from South Africa.
South Africa even during historical times is an international transit route
with a high number of travellers. As I said earlier, we have countries in South
America, Peru and Mexico; those people try to traffic their drugs to the most
populous nations such as China and India,” said Mr Matyora.
“But they can’t just go there, countries like China have
tough laws, so they pass through South Africa. They want to go through the
Philippines and countries like Afghanistan. Also coming from Afghanistan, they
have a route that goes through Tanzania, these people have a route to the South
African market which makes Zimbabwe a transit route. Once you become a transit
route it follows that you are a user.”
He said as Zimbabwe is a transit route it is not surprising
that some of the drugs end up being sold locally.
Hard drugs are being found in affluent suburbs and affluent
nightclubs. If we are talking of hard drugs, we are talking of high money. The
transit route goes through Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe and it
goes to South Africa,” he said.
Mr Matyora said the immigration department working with the
security sector, profiles travellers and those frequenting South America,
Middle East and West Africa as they are likely to be drug traffickers.
He said Zimbabweans have also become conduits of
international drug trafficking syndicates.
“The Nigerian West African transit (drug trafficking) route
affects us as Zimbabweans. We have these drug mules, these people from West Africa
know it’s tough for them to reach their target market. As I alluded to earlier
on, countries like China have tough laws so they use our brothers and sisters
as drug mules,” he said.
Zimbabweans have on several occasions been arrested while
trafficking drugs internationally.
Speaking during the same occasion, Bulawayo provincial
chairperson on the Supply and Reduction Pillar of the inter-ministerial
committee Mr Munotyei Muparadzi said the Joshua Mqabuko International Airport
has recorded several incidents of drug trafficking.
“We have observed that smugglers through our ports have
been using a plethora of technologies to smuggle and traffic drugs through
points of entry and exit. Notable among these methodologies, is concealment and
this can be done through a hand-held gadget, or putting drugs in shoes, it
could be placed within commercial goods, these are some of the major ways in
which drug traffickers are concealing drugs.
The second methodology is that of forced manipulation.
These are people who are coming from outside Africa, let’s say Europe, South
America who are given parcels to come and deliver when an individual says, ‘I
want you to go and give this parcel to my relative’ and unknowingly that person
can smuggle drugs. We also have ingestion, where one swallows drugs to avoid
being detected,” said Mr Muparadzi.
He said there is also facilitated smuggling which involves
officials at the airport taking bribes to facilitate the trafficking of hard
drugs.
He said if the country is to be successful in its quest to
address the drug trafficking problem, there is a need to train port of entry
workers on drug related matters.
“In terms of the challenges here at the Joshua Mqabuko
International Airport, we lack requisite materials as a result of budgetary
issues. We do not have adequate equipment like body scanners. We do not have
site test kits for us to test substances that we suspect have drugs. We also
don’t have adequate sniffer dogs, sometimes they come but they are not always
readily available to help us with regards to drug issues,” he said.
“The second issue is lack of technical knowhow with regards
to training where basically across the board most officers that are deployed
here lack knowledge on simply what the drug looks like, how it smells if it is
put in water or any other substance. So, lack of technical knowhow is affecting
our anti-drug smuggling efforts.”
Mr Muparadzi said there is also a need for a centralised
database with profiles of suspected drug peddlers which can replicate
international systems.
Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International Airport manager Mr
Passmore Dewa said there is a need for a coordinated approach in arresting the
drug problem at multistakeholder level.
Mr Dewa took the committee through various airport checkpoints explaining their importance in surveillance and what needs to be done to improve the monitoring systems. Chronicle
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