Dear Department of Internal Affairs,

As i got the reply from one of your staff Aline (Customer Services Officer) underneath are some points to raise :

Aline : We were also prioritizing essential identity services including birth and
death registration, registration of citizenship by descent, and issuing
passports.

Before COVID, i assume citizenship department already have these identity services to workon as well when the processing times are less (3-5 months) ?

Aline: As a direct consequence of Covid-19, the number of citizenship
applications has significantly increased since March and a number of
Citizenship Officers were unable to work from the office.

Can you please put some light on data from last 3 years(including current year) how much citizenship applications has significantly increased?

First of all the applications increase because there was no application processed from March to May or June. So obviously this will make an significant increase. If department worked from Work from home the number will not increase.

As we are in modern era and also whole NZ is working from home who can, I assume Department of Internal Affairs doesn't have a way or enough resources to Work from home while COVID?

And i also didn't the get the reply for when the processing times are going normal (3-5 months)?

Yours faithfully,
Daniel