Covid 19 Omicron outbreak: Up to 40% of Wellington council teams off sick, services slashed

By RNZ

Wellington City Council has been forced to limit and halt services such as roading and recycling, as Covid-19 sweeps through its workforce and contractors.

Council head of infrastructure Siobhan Procter said the council has been forced to focus on urgent reactive maintenance only.

About 40 per cent of its usual roading contractors are unavailable because of Covid-19, so they have been forced to call in backup teams to fix urgent roading problems.

"So if there are safety issues on the transport corridor we're addressing those first, but there is going to be a flow-on impact to projects.

"Wellington Water we know they're 30 per cent down in terms of their construction staff there, so we put a few of their renewal projects on hold as well."

Rubbish and recycling services have also been reduced, with about a third of recycling and rubbish collection contractors off sick.

About half of all household recycling had to be sent to landfill this week, and kerbside glass collection has stopped completely.

Photo / 123RF

Procter said it's impossible to say how long the current situation will last, but they hope to restore full rubbish and recycling services in a couple of weeks.

"We've ... got really good business continuity services, our contractors have got really good business continuity services - so we know we can keep those essential services going."

"We would hope that within one or two weeks we start to see things picking up and staff coming back."