Update: Northparkes’ response to COVID-19 – 1 April 2020
As the COVID-19 situation continues to evolve, CMOC-Northparkes Mines remains committed to following the advice of the government and health professionals, to ensure we are able to manage the potential exposure and risk in our workplace.
The health and safety of our employees, contractors, their families and the local community in which we live and work, remains our top priority during this pandemic.
We have taken a proactive approach and implemented precautionary and preventative measures where possible. These measures include:
- Screening of temperatures for all workers at Access Control on entry to site
- Introducing a Passive Health Screen Questionnaire
- Transitioning non-operational employees and contractors to working from home
- Actively encouraging employees who are experiencing flu like symptoms to stay home
- Reiterating the importance of respiratory and hand hygiene in the workplace
- Increasing cleaning services onsite to seven days a week
- Cancelling all non-critical domestic business travel
- Restricting site access to all non-essential visitors
- Cancelling all training, conferences and professional development. Essential training will be performed on a as needs basis (e.g. inductions).
As the pandemic continues to evolve, we are continuing to monitor the preventative measures we have in place onsite. In line with recent announcements made regarding social distancing, we have introduced some new preventative measures in relation to our onsite vehicles. This includes limiting the number of people in vehicles at any one time and allocating a set number of vehicles across departments to ensure we are able to adhere to the social distancing guidelines.
In addition to the measures listed above, we have postponed key major onsite events, including the Northparkes Family Day and the major maintenance shutdown that was scheduled to be undertaken next month. We will continue to work closely with regulators and industry groups to ensure we are complying with the national protocols.
If you have any questions regarding our approach to COVID-19, please contact our Community and External Relations Advisor on 6861 3621.
Let’s continue to support each other during these difficult and unprecedented times – we are all in this together.
