“The NSW Government has been very sluggish in responding to the current Delta outbreak, particularly in my community,” said Greek-Australian MP Sophie Cotsis.
She has her reasons to be so fierce in her critique of the Berejiklian government as her state electorate of Canterbury was one severely impacted by the Government’s strategy to lock down Local Government Areas.
The seat of Canterbury includes some of the most “Hellenic” suburbs of Sydney (among them Earlwood, Canterbury, Campsie, Clemton Park, Belmore and Hurlstone Park) and 11% of its population has declared that it is of Greek ancestry.
“People are in distress. Businesses are on the brink. People cannot work and are struggling to pay their bills, and mental health problems are on the rise.”, Ms Cotsis says, referring to some of the major problems that NSW have had to deal with during this lockdown.
On 26 June, the NSW Government began what was supposed to be a two-week lockdown to deal with the Delta outbreak of COVID-19.
Three months later, the state is still in lockdown with hopes that 11 October will finally be the end of what has been a terrible period for most.
Ms Cotsis believes that the NSW Government mismanaged the situation, proving too slow to react to the crisis.
“We have provided bipartisan support and been dealing directly with Ministers to raise issues and provide solutions to help with the myriad of complex and multilayered challenges we have faced in my community,” Ms Cotsis told Neos Kosmos.
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Ms Cotsis is critical of the Government’s response, especially in how it considered the welfare of community groups.
“The Premier should have been listening to people of Inner South West & South West Sydney from day one of the lockdown. The Government was slow to respond when we had community groups, GPs and chemists offering to assist in sharing the health message in multiple languages and help in the vaccine roll-out,” said Ms Cotsis.
“The lack of services and financial support to many vulnerable members of my community in the early stages of the lockdown has also caused significant distress.”
Ms Cotsis mentioned people’s concerns that their socioeconomic issues will be disregarded by the Government once lockdown concludes.
“People fear the Government will walk away when this outbreak is over, and ignore the financial damage and social problems it has left. We urgently need financial support, mental health bilingual workers, economic stimulus plan such as funding the redevelopment of Canterbury Hospital which will inject multilayered benefits,” Ms Cotsis said.
“I’ve written to the NSW Treasurer strongly urging him to consider this vital capital project that will benefit our community.”
Ms Cotsis also remarked on the lateness in making vaccinations the gateway to freedom for NSW, as well as the need for multilingual frontline workers to communicate better with the various community groups.
“Since the early days of the outbreak, I recognised that vaccines would play the key role in helping us out of this crisis. Since July, I called on the NSW Government to support the roll-out for vaccine pop-up clinics. These have proved the key in containing this outbreak,” Ms Cotsis said.
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“I raised this early on that we needed multilingual health workers on the ground with trusted community leaders and medicos to speak to people one on one.”
“The health advice was that lockdown was critical but the harsh measures were all people in the badly affected LGAs received. They did not get the support that was needed to get them through this crisis and the Government was too slow in supporting the roll-out of pop-up vaccine clinics,” said Ms Cotsis, who has been very active in working with her electorate’s residents in various ways.
“My electorate office has received an unprecedented number of calls from the community during the lockdown. Due to the lack of multilingual support from the Government, we have been extremely busy helping people apply for financial applications, get mental health support and book vaccinations,” Ms Cotsis said.
“We have also worked with community organisations, clubs, GPs to combat this outbreak. This crisis has brought my community closer together.”
Canterbury’s residents have rallied together especially in this period of strongly urged vaccinations.
“My community has some of the highest vaccination rates in the State, something I am very proud of. It shows the overwhelming number of people in my community are willing to do their bit in fighting this disease. Our community has responded despite the many barriers,” Ms Cotsis said.
