Singapore to Establish Green Lanes for Travel

During the lockdown, travel has been restricted to work-related excursions or allowed only for essential purposes. In order to facilitate the same and make travel easier, Singapore has come up with the idea of ‘green lanes’.

These lanes are aimed at assuring mutual testing protocols and standards amongst countries for travellers who are crossing borders for essential or official travel. Singapore has been in talks with several countries in order to implement this.

Such arrangements allow for the restoration of connectivity and facilitation of short-term essential business and official travel between countries, subject to safeguards against the coronavirus, The Straits Times said in a report.

Singapore has already established its first green lane with China. According to media reports, it is also in talks with other countries such as Australia, South Korea, New Zealand and Malaysia to possibly form these lanes. 

Currently, if a traveller is moving across borders, they are subjected to different protocols including two tests and a mandatory quarantine for almost a month. 

For these lanes to work, both countries require to have confidence in each other’s safeguards and also be able to coordinate their quarantine orders so that travellers might only need to be tested or quarantines once. 

Chan Chun Sing, the Minister for Trade and Industry, has emphasised that apart from any necessary protocols, the health situation in countries also needs to be looked at in order to determine when these protocols can be safely deployed.

(With inputs from PTI)