Pursuant to Regulation 15(3) of the Health (Quarantine) Regulations 1983, the Director-General of Health has fixed the fee for a health protection officer to conduct a ship sanitation/sanitation exemption inspection and/or issue a certificate at $96.00 per hour (excluding GST) payable to the district health board (DHB) conducting the inspection and/or issuing the certificate with effect from 15 June 2007.
Background Information
The Health (Quarantine) Regulations 1983 permit charging for the issuing of deratting certificates and exemption certificates.
Regulation 15(3) states that the fee for a deratting certificate or a deratting exemption certificate shall be such as may be fixed from time to time by the Director-General of Health.
The fee for issuing a certificate was $150.00 (including GST) or $133.33 (excluding GST), payable to the DHB public health unit which provided the certificate.
This fee was unchanged for over ten years.
Following the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005 coming into force on 15 June 2007, ships arriving in New Zealand will be required to obtain ship sanitation/ship sanitation exemption certificates rather than deratting/deratting exemption certificates.
As part of implementing the IHR in New Zealand,
the Director-General of Health reviewed the fee for inspections and certification and set the fee for ship sanitation inspections and certification at $96.00 per hour (excluding GST).
Fees for ship sanitation inspections and certification will be charged only for the health protection officer’s time for
the inspection (including travel time).
It is estimated that deratting activities currently take a health protection officer between one and one and a half hours
to complete.
The ship sanitation regime may be expected to take between two and three and a half hours, and up to five hours or longer in exceptional circumstances (depending on the size, complexity and sanitary conditions on an individual vessel).
The implications of these revised fees and charges
are expected to be that the cost of the proposed
ship sanitation/ship sanitation exemption inspection and certification regime will be around $192.00–$336.00 (excluding GST) per vessel.
This estimated cost is based on scoping the services involved in ship sanitation, compared with deratting activities.
The new fees and charges will take effect from 15 June 2007, when the ship sanitation/ship sanitation exemption inspection and certification regime will also take effect.
Dated at Wellington this 30th day of April 2007.
STEPHEN MCKERNAN, Director-General of Health.