HOTSPOT COVID PERMITS NEEDED NOW + NO JAB NO WORK FROM 6 SEPT

Print staff who live in one of the 12 NSW LGA hotspots must carry a travel permit with them from today, and from a week on Monday must also have had at  least one shot of a Covid vaccine, or have a medical reason not to, in order to go to work in another LGA, with the rapid testing option dumped.

The permits necessary for print staff in the 12 NSW LGAs of concern to go to work are now available on the Service NSW website, leaving print business scrambling to ensure their staff have the permits by today's deadline.

And effective from 6 September, print staff over the age of 16 who live in or are temporarily staying in a LGA of concern must not leave their local government area for work, unless they have had at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, or evidence of a valid medical exemption.

The Health Dept has dropped the proposed requirement for employers to provide rapid antigen testing if staff haven't been vaccinated, from 6 September it is a strict no jab no entry policy.

NSW Health is confident it has enough vaccines for everyone in those areas, it has deployed 500,000 addiitonal Pfizer shots for people aged 16-49, and has more than enough Astra Zenica for everyone else. Printers now have nine days to ensure all their staff have at least one jab.

The 12 LGAs in question host a plethora of print businesses, including some of the biggest in the country. The travel permits are needed under emergency health orders issued a week ago. They are needed from today. Staff should apply straight away.

Click here to go to the correct page, then click on  the red Register online button. Staff applying for permits will need a ServiceNSW online account, but they can set one up on the same page if they don't have one.

All staff travelling to work in Melbourne also need a travel permit, but this has been readily available on the Department of Justice website. Click here to go there.

Printers are reporting that staff travelling into the 12 NSW LGAs of concern from other parts of Greater Sydney have already been stopped en route to work by the police, and told they will need the permit from Saturday.

A Service NSW spokesperson told Print21 that now the permit application form was up staff should apply straight away, and they would receive an email confirming they had applied. This email will suffice as proof until the permit is issued, according to the spokesperson. Once issued the permits must be carried at all times when travelling to and from work, and cannot be used to justify any other journey. Big fines apply for misuse.

The permit will only last for 14 days, after which time a new permit must be applied for. 

Local printers are complaining that there is not enough time, and that their staff may not be the most tech savvy people around. One printer told Print21, “Some of my staff don’t speak the best English, some of them are older. One day is a tough ask."

From today, print staff who live in one of the 12 LGAs and who want to go to work have to carry the permit from Service NSW declaring that they are an authorised worker and that they cannot work from home.

Also from Saturday, staff who live outside those LGAs, but who come to work at a printshop that is located in one of them, also need an authorised worker permit to go to work.

And from next Monday, workers in the 12 Sydney LGAs of concern will need proof they have had at least one dose of a vaccine to go outside their LGA. Click here to go to the NSW Health website with all the rules.

The LGAs of concern are Bayside, Blacktown, Burwood, Campbelltown, Canterbury-Bankstown, Cumberland, Fairfield, Georges River, Liverpool, Parramatta, Strathfield, and some suburbs of Penrith. However other LGAs may be added to the list, and if so workers there will also need the permit, with the rest of Penrith and Camden on notice that they may be next. The 12 LGAs of concern are also now under a curfew from 9pm-5am, authorised workers are exempt, but again they need to carry their permits.

Print businesses are allowed to operate in all Australian states under lockdown, as suppliers to essential services. They must adhere to a Covid-safe plan, which must have been communicated and understood by staff, and to workplace Covid protocols, which include wearing masks at all times, maintaining social distancing, and QR check-in for visitors. Print workers are categorised under the manufacturing sector of authorised workers.

The new rules have come in as Sydney faces an escalating crisis, with case numbers now topping 1000 a day, 80 per cent of them in the 12 LGAs of concern. Lockdown in Sydney has been extended for another month, until the end of September, and in regional NSW it has been until 10 September.

The Victoria lockdown is due to end on 2 September, but case numbers there are going up, and although they remain a fraction of the NSW numbers the lockdown is almost certain to be extended, with Melbourne printers fearing it could go on until November. The whole state of Victoria is now in lockdown, as is the ACT, which is also seeing escalating case numbers. Queensland, SA, WA and Tasmania remain virtually virus-free and are operating with few restrictions.