From Mayor Chris Sharples
Over the weekend and this morning (Monday) we have seen both the cases and the community response to COVID-19 escalate. This is as a direct result of the view at all levels of government that communities are not taking the threat of pandemic seriously.
Victoria has been in a State of Emergency for a week now and all levels of government have implemented precautionary measures to restrict the potential of transmission by restricting mass gatherings, unnecessary travel, meetings and face-to-face interactions to help ease the spike that will inevitably come from the spread of COVID-19.
This has clearly not worked and in our case here in Southern Grampians there appears to be an air of complacency that cannot continue. It is not the time for panic, it is a time for calm. A time for looking after each other, in particular those most vulnerable and isolated, but more importantly, it is now time to take measures rarely seen in Australia maybe since the Great Depression.
Southern Grampians Shire Council has already taken steps to address many of these including the closing of face-to-face service centres such as Customer Service and Visitor Information Centres (full list available here www.sthgrampians.vic.gov.au/coronavirus).
I want to assure the community that we are all in this together – we are still here in Hamilton and surrounding towns, ensuring that all essential services are being delivered, even though the way you contact us has changed. We are here with all agencies, especially Western District Health Service, working on keeping our community informed and safe but everyone has a role to play by adhering to the strict measures put in place over the weekend and Monday.
From CEO Michael Tudball
In addition to the measures put in place last week, from Tuesday 24 March 2020 until at least Tuesday 14 April 2020 there will be additional measures put in place to protect our community and staff. There will be more staff working from home and accessing their workplace and tasks digitally. This may mean that when you call for advice or support, it may be a return phone call or email that you receive in the first instance. Customer Service continues to be fully staffed to answer your enquiries and refer you to the appropriate service within or outside of Council.
Our outdoor workforce will continue most works at this time, subject to both government directions and safety of our workforce. If our workforce is impacted as a result of further changes, then potentially you may see grass may not being cut as regularly, Botanic Gardens maintenance may be impacted and so on. However, at this point we are maintaining our works plans for the foreseeable future. Additional effort into cleaning, waste management and customer service are priorities for Council.
I encourage members of the community to contact us in the first instance via telephone (5573 0444) or email to get the latest and of course head to our social media pages and our website www.sthgrampains.vic.gov.au for the latest information.
I reinforce what the Mayor has said, we are all in this together and we are here with all the agencies protecting and supporting our community. However, we need to take these latest measures extremely seriously as clearly to date we haven’t been.
Finally we are here supporting all local businesses as best we can. We are working with Federal and State Agencies to package up all of the support available to small business to have ready access to this evolving and complex area to ensure that all of our local businesses get the support available.