The New South Wales Government will hire up to 3000 full-time cleaners under a new $250 million cleaning stimulus package that aims to help boost the state’s defence against COVID-19.

The state government said the $250 million cleaners’ package will improve the cleaning of public facilities including NSW transport, schools and TAFE while supporting an additional 3000 full-time cleaners by the end of June 2020.

The government funding will support small to medium-sized cleaning businesses by providing temporary employment to help existing contractors with the cleaning task to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the fresh wave of cleaners provides much-needed social and economic boost to NSW.

“While these cleaners are improving hygiene across the state, this package will provide a much-needed social and economic boost across the state,” Berejiklian said.

“Not only will this package support jobs and businesses, importantly it will also give the public the peace of mind that the Government is ensuring our public transport and education facilities remain as clean as possible at all times.”

Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said the NSW Government was on track to see the equivalent of 3000 full-time cleaners on board by the end of June.

“The thousands of jobs being generated from our stimulus package is also keeping people in jobs, and businesses in business,” Perrottet said.

“We’re hiring new cleaners, increasing the hours of existing cleaners and redeploying cleaners who would otherwise have lost jobs due to the temporary closure of some public facilities.”

The funding has helped Western Sydney company VDG Services, who are sanitising more than 550 State Transit buses daily in the eastern suburbs, keep a dozen workers in jobs after some clients cut back on cleaning.

Minister for Transport and Roads Andrew Constance said this was one example of the government’s package making a meaningful difference in transport, where cleaning efforts across the network have increased by over 83,000 hours since March.

“We’ve introduced a number of new measures to ensure our transport network is as clean as possible with crews working through the night to disinfect trains, buses, metro, light rail, ferries, depots and facilities ready for the morning commute,” Constance said.

“People catching a train might see one of our flying squads get on at one station and wipe down the train before getting off at another station to get on another train to do the job again. Or those catching a ferry, might see one of our teams wiping down the Opal readers or cleaning the terminal, making sure people are protected.”

Transport for NSW has distributed approximately 185,500 litres of hand sanitiser to staff, while 300 hand sanitiser stations across all 165 stations on the Sydney Trains network are available for customers, with the expansion to ferry wharves underway.

Thousands of personal hand sanitisers and packets of disinfectant wipes have also been distributed to staff at all train stations, bus depots, work sites and offices, including our frontline workers.

Perrottet said small and medium-sized cleaning businesses could apply for supplementary government cleaning contracts to help fight the spread of COVID-19 through a new business portal.

“We’re recruiting small and medium-sized cleaning businesses to help existing contractors with the cleaning task, with more than 50 businesses pre-qualified and able to get to work as ready-to-go teams,” Perrottet said.

A compliant application takes around three days to be processed, with businesses placed on a pre-qualified list for Government agencies to engage with.

Supplementary contracts available include; 

• General cleaning in low risk areas,
• Enhanced cleaning for COVID-19 risk reduction,
• Environment cleaning of facilities after a suspected COVID-19 diagnosis, and cleaning auditing services.

Registrations for supplementary cleaning contracts can be made here.

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