Courage Under Fire
2020 Autumn, Covid-19 started to really affect New Zealand as the first, second and third cases were diagnosed in the country, from which things quickly spiraled down.
14th March 2020 – The New Zealand Government announces anyone entering the country must self-isolate for 14 days.
19th March 2020 – For the first time in history, the government closes the country’s borders to all but New Zealanders.
On 23rd March 2020 – Our Prime Minister announced the Country will go to Level 4 lockdown within 48 hours. By 25th March 2020, All non-essential businesses will close. Travel will be severely limited and healthcare services will be re-prioritised.
By the end of that week on Friday of 27th March 2020, 368 cases were reported, and it was suggested that more people are going to be infected.
From the start of the year, RCR Infrastructure Ltd has been prepared for the situation with the direction from our Chairman John Chow, we firstly enforce work from home for our staff who had come back from the countries which had already shown signs of being affected by Covid-19.
Starting in February 2020, RCR started to monitor our spare parts stock level, to make sure the Essential Services we are supporting can have their facilities running for at least 6 months even if there is a global lock down in logistics. We also started to stock-up PPE for our front-line staff.
With the New Zealand Government starting to notice the risk in early March, RCR had Emergency Procedure and Workplace Infectious Disease Prevention put in place. Posters are put up in our lunchrooms and offices. We even tested our BCP – Business Continual Plan before the lock-down was announced by having different teams working from home in a controlled manner.
With all the preparation, our essential services customers fully trusted us in carrying out essential repairs and maintenance duties in the lockdown period.
In the first week of the lockdown, with more and more cases of COVID-19 being reported and the number of cases shooting up to more than 1000 cases in New Zealand.
In this trying time the 100 strong staff of RCR, weathered the pandemic constraints, with full PPE gear and with Courage and Determination to support the country when it needed our support.
We are supporting 148 Countdowns Supermarkets, to ensure the day-to-day operations and safety of customers and staff with all their lighting, power systems and conveyor belts working. Our way of ensuring Kiwis have access to food supplies.
We support 9 Forterra factories that are in production mode, with us servicing their HVAC and refrigeration equipment. Young kiwi’s would have their milk supplies continued
We sent urgent maintenance team to lifeline providers, i.e. Watercare, Police Stations, Power stations, Power lines across the countries.
Moreover, we are helping build 7 testing stations in South Auckland to support the most vulnerable demography in New Zealand.
All the above was done with the Courage and Determination of our dedicated and qualified frontline staff.
They do have families, they would have wanted to stay home to keep away from the virus, they could be afraid, they do have concerns over the uncertainty.
But with the RCR Spirit we did it, and we did it well.
THANK YOU!
Garry Ko
Executive Director
