Providing a critical role in detection and economic recovery Roch Cheroux Managing Director, Sydney Water
From ensuring the health and safety of our people to maintain supply of services, to supporting the COVID-19 response effort, and the ongoing contribution of our $5.4 billion capital works program, Sydney Water has responded to the pandemic by looking after our people and customers first.
Putting our people and customers first The safety and wellbeing of our people and the communities we work in has always been Sydney Water’s number one priority. In the past few years, we have had to adapt and respond to drought, bushfires, floods and leverage our infrastructure and expertise to support our customers and our workforce through significant challenges. Now, in the midst of an unpredictable and unprecedented health and economic challenge, we are focussed on our commitment to our people and customers through our response to COVID-19. When the pandemic hit last year, we developed a response based on three existing principles to: • reduce risk • support those in need, and • promote positive physical and mental health. We are proud to have continued to deliver uninterrupted highquality water, wastewater and some stormwater and recycled water services to more than five million people in Greater Sydney and the Illawarra, while enabling 1,500 people to work remotely and 1,000 field staff to work safely within the community. We had and continue to have robust systems in place to ensure business continuity during the pandemic while protecting people’s wellbeing. To date, this has been successfully achieved, however, we remain conscious of the significant challenges many of our customers have and continue to experience as a result of the pandemic, and we remain committed to doing what we can to support them. Our Customer Care team has seen a 37 per cent increase in the number of calls for payment assistance. We have seen less customers paying their bill on time compared to 2019. Given the important role we play in the community as a provider of an essential service, customers are being supported with initiatives including longer term payment extensions, extended Contact Centre opening hours, and the cancellation of disconnections.
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Contributing to the health response Utilities such as Sydney Water were originally established to protect communities from the threats of water scarcity and water borne diseases. The role of water services in protecting public health during this pandemic is no different – particularly given the importance of handwashing in preventing transmission of the disease. Aside from the supply of safe, high-quality drinking water early in the pandemic, Sydney Water commenced a rapid research and development project working on a method to detect genetic markers of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in wastewater. Sydney Water continues to work with NSW Health to undertake sampling and testing from within the wastewater network, which helps identify hotspots for further community testing. The rapid turn-around provided NSW Health with an additional tool for managing the response to the pandemic. The implementation of the tool has allowed NSW Health to target messaging and testing to high-risk areas where fragments of the virus are detected. This is extremely valuable to communities across the state in providing early detection and tracking of possible COVID-19 clusters and outbreaks, and assisting NSW Health in managing the public response to the pandemic. Following its implementation in NSW in July 2020, the world-first research program has been replicated in other states and is highly respected worldwide.
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