Happy New Year.
From the Bored Neurotic Housewife’s kitchen to you and your family, we hope you have had a decent break over Christmas and New Year. Sadly, it is now back to the new lunacies facing the industry.
Testing times for all ahead. Testing indeed, with truck-friendly test sites on the east coast being closed between now and the end of January It is assumed all truck drivers need is the new wonderful rapid antigen test (RAT) at their expense.
So far mines have not advised changes to wanting PCR test results, some drivers still have PCR tests as part of their safe work plans, some drivers want to continue to do PCR tests for accuracy in case, God forbid, they take Covid home.
Don’t forget WA still requires a PCR and drivers do travel through the eastern states to get to WA.
Here they must have a negative PCR no less than 72 hours old. THEN they get a RAT anyway when they get to the border. Which is another whole sideshow in itself.
Take a RAT. If positive or inconclusive you are escorted and guarded by a police officer to Boulder, where you do a PCR – regardless of what your last PCR test result was prior to getting to the border.
The inconclusive RAT could simply be taken again, but no, you are taken for a PCR, only one RAT is allowed. Welcome to Western Australia.
The new reporting of a positive RAT is still in disarray. Drivers can test positive but with no symptoms they can go to work. Is this morally the right thing to do? That was a question posed by one driver.
Whether morally right or wrong, truck drivers and owners are struggling with the current ineptness of our state and territory governments to maintain continuity in an industry that has no borders.
Local drivers doing food deliveries are falling victim to Covid. It is great that we are no longer doing lockdowns; we all had Christmas, etc.
But knowing that Omicron is so virulent, the public have not been seen to take due care when out and about, case numbers pretty much prove this.
Drivers are feeling unwell, their RAT is negative, they keep driving. If by chance they can find a test site to take them and they can park the truck, is the Medicare number set aside by Scott Buchholz MP office still valid?
Will they stop this number being used? Drivers can’t afford this.
All these questions have been asked – there are a lot of deaf ears out there.