Ballarat's construction workers left without a job for possibly the next two weeks are directing their frustrations at businesses that have failed to do the right thing.
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Far from anger at the state government for closing down the industry for up to two weeks, workers are instead blaming those in the industry who have failed to follow health department direction.
Gerard Murphy, who works as a construction supervisor, said there was a sense of frustration at "300 or so people who have doomed 300,000".
"It's very frustrating because I know the people up here and the people I work for have been doing the right thing from the get-go," he said.
"We do everything humanly possible, we temperature check everyone before they enter the site, smoko huts are cleaned three times a day. People come on in split shifts, we only have two people per lunch room. We are cleaner than most houses.
"I think the final straw was what happened yesterday (Monday), I won't comment on the union people, but I don't think it was all them."
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Mr Murphy said the company he works for had been trying to plug holes for weeks even before the ban came into effect on Monday night.
"I've got one job which I've just started and I've got a project in Ararat which hasn't got started as yet," he said.
"They've sort of needed supervisors for hire at various sites. One job in Lorne has been declared a tier one site, so half the staff, the project manager are all in 14-days lockdown, but you've got to keep it going, so I've been doing the supervising there.
"This week I was supposed to be in Bannockburn. The Bannockburn site was being run by a bloke who lives in Geelong, and now Geelong has been shut down as well.
"The company is just juggling and doing what they can do. I've only got a little bit of leave which I want to keep for Christmas, so I'll just have to go without pay."
Kevin Vanderkley from Kevin Vanderkley Hearty Homes said his business currently had 50 homes on the go.
He expects that a two-week shutdown will put back construction on most properties about a month, given the amount of ordering and deliveries which will need to be undertaken on resumption whenever that might be.
"It's the most difficult for those in the trade, the pay cheques will just stop for a lot of people. They are the ones who will be looking for some sort of government support," he said.
"As a whole in the industry, it will mean clients houses will take longer to build, but fortunately at this stage we're not seeing a lot of anger from our customers, people have been pretty understanding which in some way has reduced the stress a bit."
Mr Vanderkley said he was disappointed to see scenes in Melbourne over the past few days which he said were giving the whole industry a bad reputation.
Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said 403 COVID cases were directly linked to the construction sector linked to 186 construction sites. "Of those 49 (cases) in regional Victoria, most of them - not all, but most of them - reside in now the lockdown areas of Ballarat, Geelong and Mitchell shires.
"As a result of these figures, the public health team was left with no choice but to hit the pause button and continue to work with the sector over the next two weeks to improve compliance."