A BURONGA business is scrambling for its own solutions after Service NSW’s website still wasn’t displaying permit applications late on Tuesday.
Gregg & Sons Steel owner Sandra Gregg resorted to makeshift permits to help staff cross the border before the NSW border closure took effect on Wednesday.
“We won’t have any staff, we’ll have family because we all live in New South Wales but we won’t have any staff because they are nearly all residents of Merbein,” Mrs Gregg said.
“We’ve been trying, trying, trying to get permits but of course the website has crashed.
“I’ve typed up our letterhead and photographed their licence saying they do work for us and we need them and they haven’t been to Melbourne (in the past 14 days).”
Mrs Gregg predicted mass delays in crossing the border for the duration of the closure.
“They’ll be banked up past Sunraysia Daily, don’t you worry — it will be banked up to the airport,” she said.
“If they are doing roadworks or somebody loses something off the tray of their ute, it’s a holdup, you just see the bank-up within an hour so — imagine a full day.”
Mrs Gregg said customers had come into the Gregg & Sons office and reported police had been unable to provide clarity.
She said she was frustrated measures had not been taken further south earlier, as the Victorian Government announced it would be putting Melbourne and Mitchell Shire in regional Victoria into lockdown from midnight tonight for six weeks following 191 new coronavirus cases being announced on Tuesday.
“Why wouldn’t they just stop the Calder and all the highways coming into these country towns?” she said.
“As soon as it was starting to look like Melbourne was getting bad, our roads have just been getting choked.”
Wentworth Shire Mayor Melisa Hederics was contacted for her reaction to the border closure.
