Cosatu warns One Stop Border Bill's silence on illegal migration and exports threatens jobs

Cosatu has said the proposed One Stop Border Bill's silence on the uncontrolled explosion of illegal migration and exports flooding into South Africa threatens local jobs, businesses, value chains, and revenue needed to fund public services.

This is as the federation also criticised the Department of Home Affairs' reneging on an agreement to table the Bill at Nedlac for engagement with social partners.

In submissions to the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs on the One Stop Border Bill on Tuesday, Cosatu, along with the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office, raised concerns about the rampant corruption at various border posts.

Cosatu Parliamentary spokesperson Matthew Parks said administrative areas of concern included the silence on specific roles of the Border Management Agency (BMA), South African Revenue Service (Sars), the South African Police Service, and the SA National Defence Force.

Parks said the respective legislative mandates need to be affirmed, upheld, and stated clearly in the Bill to ensure attempts by the BMA to usurp the constitutional role of Sars or any other separate state institution are not allowed to happen, even by default, as well as to control corruption at the border posts.

"We are worried by the impression created by the Bill that it seeks to fast-track the movement of goods at border posts. This may have the unintended consequence of telling Border Management Authority and Sars officials at the border posts to waive collecting customs due to the state. Collection of customs duties is not merely to ensure the state receives taxes due to it, but also to ensure tariffs put in place to protect fragile local industries, businesses, value chains, and jobs are enforced," Parks said.

Parks warned that the government should not be in the business of undermining Nedlac, as it makes the life of stakeholders and parliamentarians easier when issues are presented with already agreed-upon resolutions.

"There is real value in Nedlac. As Business and as Labour, we share many values about fixing the state capacity to provide quality public services that labour and businesses require, and economic growth is linked to this. We are having engagement at Nedlac to build that cohesive state and social partners to build those social compacts," Parks said.

Cosatu also warned against expediting the process of opening up the country to goods and people without proper safeguards, citing the 1990s when the country opened its borders too quickly for goods, and hence a flood of Chinese T-shirts, goods, and clothes caused 100 000 job losses overnight.

"If we struggle as a country to enforce controls at our borders, be it land, sea, or air, how much more the other countries? We had issues under the  Southern African Customs Union that T-shirts are allegedly produced in Malawi, Eswatini, etc. We know, relatively or not, they are produced in China, but some local supplier within this country just sold a label that says 'Made in Eswatini,'" Parks said.

In a Time Release Study (TRS) conducted jointly by Sars and the Eswatini Revenue Service last year, the turnaround time for trucks exporting cargo to Eswatini at the Oshoek/Ngwenya port of entry in Mpumalanga had been reduced from 1 hour 42 minutes to just 10 minutes, and the import of similar cargo has seen the time spent at the border slashed from 42 minutes to 10 minutes.

The study helped identify bottlenecks that led to long delays at the border crossing, as plans were afoot to have a one-window experience for truck drivers processing freight.

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