{"id":321284,"date":"2021-08-10T22:54:52","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T19:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/two-tier-delta-lockdowns-divide-sydney\/"},"modified":"2021-08-10T22:54:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-10T19:54:52","slug":"two-tier-delta-lockdowns-divide-sydney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/two-tier-delta-lockdowns-divide-sydney\/","title":{"rendered":"#Two-tier Delta lockdowns divide Sydney"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Two-tier Delta lockdowns divide Sydney<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

SYDNEY, Aug 10 \u2013 On the sands of Bondi Beach, one of\u00a0Sydney\u2019s wealthiest suburbs, surfers and seaside walkers jostle for space, while joggers clog the nearby promenade and fitness buffs huddle around public exercise equipment.<\/p>\n

To the west, where COVID-19 infections are greatest, stores sit shuttered on empty streets as some of Australia\u2019s most migrant-heavy neighborhoods endure heightened\u00a0lockdowns, enforced by high-visibility policing backed up by the military.<\/p>\n

About three-quarters of New South Wales state\u2019s nearly 5,000 active cases come from nine\u00a0Sydney\u00a0local government districts, urban sprawl stretching from about 7.5 miles southwest of the\u00a0Sydney\u00a0Harbour Bridge to the Blue Mountains foothills.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe community here is really struggling at the moment and they feel there\u2019s a double standard,\u201d said Bilal El-Hayek, a councilor from the city\u2019s west who spends most days helping deliver food packages to people who don\u2019t qualify for pandemic-related support payments.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see photos and videos coming out of the east, people on the beach, whereas here the streets are absolutely empty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As Australia\u2019s largest city struggles to contain its worst outbreak of the pandemic, the harsher restrictions and tougher policing in its most-affected neighborhoods have stoked resentment in its most vulnerable people. That feeling is especially raw since the\u00a0Delta\u00a0outbreak began in Bondi, with an unmasked, unvaccinated airport driver.<\/p>\n

Though the whole East Coast city of 5 million is in lockdown, around 1.8 million in its ethnically diverse west are banned from leaving their immedia<\/a>te surroundings and doing any face-to-face work. Authorized workers must be tested every three days, and masks are mandatory outside homes.<\/p>\n

The rest of the city is getting by with construction and property maintenance allowed, fewer movement restrictions and masks not required outdoors. Schools, which have been closed citywide since June, are returning everywhere but the west.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven the refugee communities who came here 40 years ago, how do we think these people will feel in a situation like this?\u201d said Elfa Moraitakis, CEO of SydWest Multicultural Services, which provides aged care and settlement services for refugees. \u201cOf course they feel targeted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mervat Altarazi, a Palestinian refugee who is also a SydWest case worker, said the police and army presence had raised doubts in her clients, many of them from countries like Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a shock for them as they believed they arrived in a free country and they say, \u2018we face same what we face in our (home) country\u2019,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them told me, \u2018we are not the virus\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

New South Wales Police declined a request for comment, although it has said publicly the 300 defense force personnel helping with \u201ccompliance checks\u201d are trained in community engagement and unarmed.<\/p>\n

Tim Soutphommasane, a former federal race discrimination commissioner, called western\u00a0Sydney\u00a0\u201cthe heartland of multicultural Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t get this right, we will undermine the social fabric of this city for years to come,\u201d he said in an email.<\/p>\n

\"A
A woman takes a selfie on the grass at Bondi Beach with digital warning signs for social distancing behind her on August 10, 2021 in Sydney, Australia. <\/figcaption>
Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Business bust<\/strong><\/p>\n

The tougher\u00a0lockdowns\u00a0have also dealt an economic blow the federal government \u2013 facing its weakest polling in years and with elections due by early 2022 \u2013 has said may contribute to a second recession in\u00a0two\u00a0years.<\/p>\n

The west, where three-quarters of residents in some suburbs are overseas-born, contributes about 7% to the $1.2 trillion national economy, with major logistics and manufacturing hubs there, according to Business Western\u00a0Sydney\u00a0(BWS), an industry association.<\/p>\n

Before the\u00a0lockdowns, three-quarters of the area\u2019s 1 million workers left their neighborhoods daily to go to jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese workers have gone from earning a wage to, for many of them, lining up for welfare for the first time in their lives,\u201d said BWS Executive Director David Borger.<\/p>\n

The state government has said it would let the 80,000 construction workers from the west return to job sites once fully vaccinated, but with supply shortages and changing advice about vaccines for people under 40, less than a sixth of young Australians have had both shots, government figures show.<\/p>\n

\"Digital
Digital warning displays at Bondi Beach on August 10, 2021 in Sydney, Australia. <\/figcaption>
Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After riding a construction boom through the first 20 months of the pandemic, Brickworks Ltd, the country\u2019s top brickmaker, making a million bricks a day, said it pulled\u00a0two\u00a0Western\u00a0Sydney\u00a0plants offline after the lockdown brought an 80% reduction in demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think about trying to find space to stack 800,000 bricks a day, in the end we get to the point our yards are full,\u201d said Managing Director Lindsay Partridge by phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had no choice, we had to come offline.\u201d<\/p>\n

Restaurants across the city are banned from seating customers and rely on takeaway to survive, but the reduced income in the west, coupled with restricted movement, has severely dented sales.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne rule app<\/a>lies to the west, one rule applies to the east,\u201d said Abdul Eldick, who has owned Lebanese restaurant Little Trip<\/a>oli for 12 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t need the government\u2019s money. I can make my own money. Just give me back my business.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Two-tier Delta lockdowns divide Sydney” SYDNEY, Aug 10 \u2013 On the sands of Bondi Beach, one of\u00a0Sydney\u2019s wealthiest suburbs, surfers and seaside walkers jostle for space, while joggers clog the nearby promenade and fitness buffs huddle around public exercise equipment. To the west, where COVID-19 infections are greatest, stores sit shuttered on empty streets as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":321285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/08\/sydney-covid-lockdown-001.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[113833,20358,1545,67243],"class_list":["post-321284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-8-10-21","tag-australia","tag-coronavirus","tag-lockdown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}