IOM, Zimbabwe Government, Inaugurate Border Migrant Reception Centre

GENEVA, Switzerland, October 12, 2012/African Press Organization (APO)/ -- IOM and the Government of Zimbabwe will today (12/10) inaugurate the newly refurbished Nyamapanda Temporary Reception Centre (NTRC) located on the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, some 300 km east of the Zimbabwean capital, Harare.

The centre comprises an IOM operations office, an immigration office, a kitchen, a warehouse, a nursing building, an entertainment area, a water borehole and accommodation tents mounted on concrete slabs.

It will be able to provide, at any one time, temporary shelter, protection, medical assistance and migration advice to approximately 300 migrants who cross the Mozambique border into Zimbabwe en route to South Africa to find work or seek political asylum.

The centre will also provide psycho-social and health support, biometric registration and cooked meals. Bone fide asylum seekers will also be offered free transport to Tongogara refugee camp, some 630 km away.

Most of the migrants arriving at the NTRC, who include women and unaccompanied minors, are fleeing conflict, poverty and human rights abuses. They mainly come from countries in the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes, including Ethiopia, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.

Before the creation of the NTRC, migrants arriving in Nyamapanda were forced to camp in the open or stay with the local community, before undertaking a long journey, often on foot, to Harare where their cases would be processed.

The NTRC was established in August 2011 to cope with the arrival of growing numbers of asylum seekers and economic migrants. Since then it has hosted over 8, 000 migrants. Some 97% of them were subsequently transferred to Tongogara refugee camp by IOM.

The EUR 150,000 refurbishment was funded by Japan's International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), UNOCHA and the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF.)

IOM is operating two other migrant reception facilities in Zimbabwe: Beitbridge on the border with South Africa and Plumtree on the Zimbabwe-Botswana border, which provides humanitarian assistance to returned migrants from South Africa and Botswana.