An official spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) has told Indian Weekender that the government's travel advisory to India remains unchanged at Level 2 as was before Covid-19.
“The Ministry's travel advisory for India remains at Level 2, where travellers are advised to ‘exercise increased caution’. This is the same level that India was at before Covid-19,” the spokesperson said, allaying concerns.
The spokesperson was responding to the Indian Weekender's query following a report appearing in NZ Herald on Monday, March 7, that the risk associated with travelling to India was escalated to Level 4 on Friday, March 4 at 11.59 p.m. when the government removed the Covid-19 travel advisory.
Notably, the government, in line with its five-step border reopening-plan has, removed the global ‘do not travel’ advisory last week, which has been in place since March 2020 and announced to revert to the previous destination-specific travel advisory.
Given that Level 4 is the highest level of Safe Travel's four advisories and clearly advises New Zealanders to not travel to those destinations, as often the risk involved is too high, and the government has the limited capability and influence to ensure the safe return of travellers, there was a significant concern within the Kiwi-Indian community who has a pressing need to travel frequently to India about the news emanating in the mainstream media.
In recent years (before the Covid-19 pandemic), the two-way travel between NZ and India has significantly increased, pointing towards growing people to people relations and a potential vibrant travel and tourism market.
For an unhindered growth of the travel market between any two destinations, travel advisories play an important role as it directly affects the insurance component of the travel industry.
In the post-Covid world, which has witnessed mayhem of NZ's travel and tourism industry along with disruption of major global travel routes, any unreasonable travel advisory would have the potential to adversely affect the growth of the travel industry along with causing concern within a vast segment of Indian New Zealanders.
This story has been brought to you by Public Interest Journalism by NZ on Air
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