Queensland miners fear Fifo workers could pose a threat during coronavirus pandemic
Central Queensland mineworkers say they have boycotted shifts out of concern that thousands of fly-in, flyout (Fifo) workers continue to cycle through work camps and mine sites, in stark contrast to ever-increasing gathering and travel restrictions that have affected other industries.
Queensland will close its state border on Thursday morning to restrict the movement of people from interstate and the spread of coronavirus. The state has exempted Fifo workers in mining and other industries.
“There are still thousands coming in and thousands coming out every week, from Townsville and [Brisbane and the Gold Coast] where there are all [coronavirus] cases,” one miner from Dysart told Guardian Australia. He has not been back to work for several days out of concern for his own health.
“They’re still just flying and driving people in. That’s the hypocrisy for me – the government is telling people not to go to a cafe or restaurant and stay home.
“Imagine the uproar if it was the other way around – we had a camp full of infected people and started sending them to Sydney.”
In Moranbah, locals say they are anxious about the capacity of the community to cope with a virus outbreak.
The town’s health professionals are mostly itinerant workers themselves.
Kim Sinclair, a mother and the wife of a mineworker from Moranbah, said she pulled her children out of school this week.
“We’ve got seven hospital beds in our town, we don’t have an intensive care unit and we’re two and a half hours away from Mackay,” Sinclair said.
“Things here are starting to get pretty anxious. I have taken my children out of school to try to reduce the risk of community spread, but unfortunately my husband is required to go to his place of work with hundreds and thousands of people who flow through there, and many of them who are flying in from the east coast.
“Because of labour hire and the way the workforce is casualised, I doubt people will speak up.”
A Fifo mineworker who has declined work in the past few weeks for personal health reasons said the camps and mine sites appeared to have proactive plans in place, but his main concern was the potential for transmission of the virus on flights and bus rides to the camp sites.
“From the regulatory point of view they should be stopping the travel ... everyone that needs to work should have to stay in the community. That sounds difficult but it’s nothing compared to what other industries have had to do.
“Not only that, you need to go one step further and have people on one shift insulated from another.”
An estimated 42,000 workers in the mining industry take flights or buses to remote worksites and stay in camps.
Most of those camps have put in place stringent monitoring and safety procedures.
BHP says it is limiting gatherings and has social distancing protocols in place.
“This includes changes to how teams travel to sites, gather at the start of shifts as well as procedures in camps and how maintenance is scheduled and undertaken,” the company said in a statement released this week.
One of the largest operators of accommodation for mineworkers, Civio, says it is screening all guests, employees and contractors, and doing additional sanitisation of rooms and common areas.
“A quarantine and isolation protocol [will] be implemented in the event our screening protocol identifies anyone who is symptomatic of Covid-19,” a Civio statement says.