Smuggling: Police want greater role in controlling airports
Zvamaida Murwira
Senior Reporter
The police want a greater role and unhindered access at airports to help prevent criminals smuggling out gold and other minerals in their luggage as many now enforcing smuggling rules are not trained or experienced in general law enforcement.
Commissioner General Godwin Matanga yesterday told a joint sitting of the parliamentary portfolio committees on Mines and Mining Development and of Home Affairs, Defence and Security Services that there was need for close collaboration with all law enforcement agencies at ports of entry such as Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport where there has been smuggling of gold.
Matanga summoned over gold smuggling
Rutendo Nyeve, Sunday News Correspondent
THE Parliamentary Portfolio Committees on Defence, Security and Home Affairs together with Mines and Mining Development have summoned Zimbabwe Republic Police Commissioner General Godwin Matanga to appraise them on what was being done to stop cases of mineral smuggling across the country’s borders.
Parliament last week also asked Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe to give a ministerial statement on the security situation at the country’s borders following the arrest of a Zimbabwean attempting to smuggle gold at South Africa’s OR Tambo International Airport last Sunday.
HARARE – Zimbabwe’s permanent secretary of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Nick Mangwana, scoffed at the United Kingdom’s recent imposition of sanctions on four Zimbabwean security chiefs.
Mangwana said there was no logic in imposing a travel ban on individuals who have for the past three years never expressed interest in travelling to the UK.
The UK had imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on state security minister Owen Ncube, CIO boss Isaac Moyo, police chief Godwin Matanga and former presidential guard commander Anselem Sanyatwe.
In response, Mangwana posted on Twitter and said:
Has any of these have any assets in the UK or showed any interest to travel there in the last 3 years?
The United Kingdom has slapped sanctions on four Zimbabwean security officials over alleged human rights abuses, in a move that will restrict their travel to Britain and freeze their assets.
Applying a new sanctions regime following its exit from the European Union, the UK on Monday cited a crackdown on protests in January 2019 which killed 17, and post-election violence in 2018, as it introduced the sanctions on Minister for State Security Owen Ncube, as well as heads of police and intelligence organisations.
“These sanctions send a clear message that we will hold to account those responsible for the most egregious human rights violations, including the deaths of innocent Zimbabweans,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in a statement.
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