20 Feb 2017

Secretary for Economic and Financial Policy in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development,  Dr Taufila Nyamadzabo says the main objective of seeking to create the sniffer dog capabilities within the BURS border control environment is to complement other law enforcement initiatives geared at protecting the people of Botswana.

Speaking at the inaugural graduation of the BURS Canine Unit Team, Dr Nyamadzabo said the establishment of the unit aimed at protecting Batswana against the importation of contraband such as habit forming drugs like marijuana, mandrax, heroin, cocaine, LSD, ecstasy, CITES products, arms, ammunitions and others.

He said empirical evidence had shown that the use of sniffer dogs by law enforcement agencies worldwide for counteracting cross border trafficking of habit forming drugs and other forms of contrabands had been the most effective when compared to other methods.

“This is more so because dogs are trainable, easy to deploy and capable of using their smelling capabilities to reach goods concealed in difficult to reach parts of the vehicles or luggage in an intrusive manner,” said Dr Nyamadzabo.

“If the dogs are properly guided, they can assist BURS to expeditiously conduct inspections of cargo and cross-border travelers. The dogs that BURS has procured and trained have been imprinted with capabilities to detect among others narcotics, currency, tobacco, copper wire, endangered species and tobacco products,” he said.

Dr Nyamadzabo noted that with the establishment of the sniffer dog capabilities, BURS was afforded the opportunity to reduce the turnaround times required to process cargo and people through ports of entry.

He said this would go a long way in improving service delivery at the ports of entry adding that Botswana as a developing country needs to enhance her ability to derive maximum economic benefits that come about through facilitating international trade including leverage on the country’s transit business opportunities as a landlocked country.

Given the non-intrusive capabilities of sniffer dogs, he said, their deployment at strategic ports of entry has the potential to save the economy millions of Pula that are lost through illicit cross-border trading while at the same time reducing physical inspection-related side effects that are more often than not borne by traders such as pilferage and breakage of cargo.

Commissioner of South African Revenue Service (SARS) Mr Tom Moyane said their region has become attractive to international drug trafficking syndicates due to the exploitation of non-existent or ineffective border controls, limited cross border and regional cooperation as well as serious deficiencies in the criminal justice systems. He said this places a great reliance and responsibility on members of BURS Detector Dog Unit to ensure that the state was not compromised and citizens were protected at all times.BOPA