It was on September 12 afternoon that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern proudly announced that the Covid-19 traffic light system would end at 11.59 pm on the same date, spelling the end of more than two years of Covid rules.
Ardern also confirmed that masks would only be required in health and aged care settings, and household contacts do not have to isolate along with positive cases if they return daily negative RAT results.
"In short, we now move on to a simple two requirements system of masks in healthcare settings and seven days of isolation for positive cases only," Ardern said.
Though NZ has opened its border and removed most of the Covid-19 restrictions, one thing that still stays is the New Zealand Traveller Declaration (NZTD). Simply put, everyone travelling to NZ by air must complete a declaration and receive a Traveller Pass before travelling.
This includes NZ citizens and residents, children and infants. It means that travellers to NZ still need to get government permission to come to Aotearoa, and for that, they need to fill out an online form which takes about 10 minutes to fill.
For the uninitiated, the NZTA system went live at 11.59 pm on March 31, 2022, and was primarily introduced to ensure that people coming here had vaccine passes, among others. However, the government has now dropped that requirement.
So, many people are asking that since the government has now removed most of the covid-19 restrictions, including wearing masks, why NZTD is still there?
Prachi Rastogi, a Kiwi-Indian Papakura resident, says, "I don't understand the logic of having the Traveller declaration now. It is both time consuming and unnecessary stress for travellers, especially old ones."
Sharing the frustration about the NZTD, another Kiwi-Indian, Siddharth Verma, says, “I think NZTD is just useless and a complete waste of time. When we travel, we already provide similar information in the Customs form but then what is the need to fill in the same information twice? I don't think NZTD serves any purpose presently. The Government should remove this requirement.”
The Government Response
To find the Government's rationale behind continuing NZTD, Indian Weekender got in touch with government authorities.
Responding to our query, Minister for Covid-19 Response and Associate Minister of Health, Dr Ayesha Verrall, said, “The Director-General of Health recommended that the requirement to provide contact details and travel history information via the NZTD system for air arrivals should be retained to enable timely contact tracing, should this be needed. As a preparedness measure our ability to respond to a potential new variant of concern identified offshore relies on being able to contact trace at pace. On balance, I agree that the maintenance of this provision is appropriate."
Moving on, we got in touch with New Zealand Customs, which protects and promotes NZ through border management, about the need and future of NZTD. A Customs spokesperson said that NZTD is still needed for contact tracing in case a new variant is detected. The spokesperson said, “Air travellers to NZ still need to provide information, through their NZTD before departure for NZ, for contact tracing purposes in case of a new Covid-19 variant of concern being detected. In the event of a variant of concern, this information may be used by health agencies. In the longer term, the NZTD system will provide a platform to manage future risks such as other pandemics or new biosecurity threats.”
The spokesperson confirmed that the travellers no longer need to upload proof of vaccination as part of their Traveller Declaration.
The spokesperson further revealed that by June 2023, digital NZTD would likely replace the current paper arrival card. "By June 2023, the NZTD will enable travellers to digitally complete their full travel declaration including customs, immigration, and biosecurity declarations as well as health risk assessments as required. It is intended that this will replace the current paper arrival card”, said the spokesperson.