The Government isn’t keeping track of how many foreign citizens it is letting into New Zealand under the ‘essential other worker’ border closure exemption, National’s Immigration spokesperson Stuart Smith has revealed.

“New Zealand needs strong, secure and competent border procedures to keep us all safe from another Covid-19 outbreak, and to allow us to progressively re-open our tourism and export education industries when it is safe.

“But information revealed to me by the Immigration Minister is that his department isn’t even keeping track of how many people it has allowed to enter New Zealand under the ‘essential other worker’ border closure exemption.

“When I requested the information, clumsy and incompetent Immigration Minister Ian Lees-Galloway said it would take too much effort to find out the exact number, and it was not in the public interest for him to do so.

“It is profoundly incompetent to think that with our current border closures, Mr Lees-Galloway and the Government don’t know the exact amount of people who are entering New Zealand under any type of visa.

“If the Government doesn’t know how many people it is letting in, how is it keeping track of them to make sure they are not sick?"