Security firm with four full-time staff contracted to work at quarantine hotels

A security firm that had only four full-time staff was subcontracted to work at most of Melbourne's quarantine hotels.

Sterling Services Group (SSG) was contracted by Unified Security to fill more than 4000 shifts at 13 hotels, including the Rydges on Swanston, from the start of the quarantine program at the end of March through to July.

Sam Aggarwal from Sterling Services Group at the Victorian inquiry into hotel quarantine on Wednesday.

Yet the company had only four permanent employees, which included its director Sam Aggarwal, according to documents tendered to Victoria's inquiry into hotel quarantine.

The details emerged as the Department of Health and Human Services released a report on genomic data which showed the coronavirus outbreak at the Rydges Hotel, associated with almost all the cases in Victoria's second wave of outbreaks, evolved into 10 further genomic clusters following a "super spreading event".

The hotel contracting arrangements are a focus of the inquiry because of allegations guards were recruited over WhatsApp and were provided with no training on COVID-19.

The inquiry heard on Wednesday that six SSG guards contracted coronavirus following confirmation a Rydges staff member had the virus on May 26.

Although SSG subcontracted across several hotels, Mr Aggarwal said in his statement that he was never provided any details of the head contract that the Victorian government entered into with Unified Security.

Head contracts were provided to the three other companies subcontracted to the program which also gave evidence on Wednesday.

Though an SSG guard previously told the inquiry he was recruited over WhatsApp, Mr Aggarwal said this was not how they employed guards, sourcing primarily from the company's database.

"We don't recruit people from social media at all, not any social channel," he said.

The SSG guard, who caught COVID-19, said he was not given any training in infection control before he started.

Mr Aggarwal told the inquiry all guards were required to complete an online training module and Unified Security inducted guards at the start of their shifts.

"There was never any issues with PPE; there was PPE on site at Rydges," the SSG director said.

He said he was surprised to learn that the SSG guard gave evidence that he had delivered food and worked at a warehouse after contracting COVID-19.

Mr Aggarwal said he had urged staff to stay home if they were positive and said he had paid their wages while they quarantined.

Unified Security are expected to give evidence to the inquiry on Thursday, responding to questions raised about the selection and expansion of its role in the program.

Though the company was not known to the union movement and did not sit on the government's preferred panel of security suppliers, it became the main contractor for the quarantine program, offered $28.6 million for work across 13 Melbourne hotels.

The inquiry was also told on Wednesday that another eight guards who worked at the Stamford Plaza, seven of them from United Risk Management, tested positive in June.

United Risk Management said transmission may have occurred between staff car-pooling to work, working on the same floor or at shift change-over.

The inquiry also heard stand-offs between a major security company and a state government department over the role security guards played in hotel quarantine led to the company being labelled "difficult".

Wilson Security regional general manager Greg Watson told the Victorian inquiry into the quarantine program he thought he was escalating "fair and reasonable" concerns to the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions.

The Crowne Plaza on Spencer Street in Melbourne’s CBD was one of the quarantine hotels Wilson Security manned.Credit:The Age

In internal emails, Jobs Department officials called the firm "difficult" and appeared to favour Unified Security.

"I didn't realise that we had won the reputation of being difficult to deal with at that point in time," Mr Watson said. "I think what we were pointing out were fair and reasonable in relation to infection control measures and indeed the powers of the security officer."

The inquiry heard Wilsons sacked 23 guards, 21 of them in the first two weeks, over the 13 weeks they worked in hotel quarantine. One was sacked for hitting on a female detainee, sliding a note under the door that said: "Hey hun, add me on Snapchat."

Mr Watson said the firm had hired a large volume of guards, many of them subcontracted, in a short space of time and some weren't suitable.

"So we took pretty well a no-prisoners approach, that this needs to be run very strictly," he said.

No Wilsons guards tested positive for COVID-19, with the firm developing its own infection control procedures for all guards with a contracted epidemiologist.

A report released by the Department of Health and Human Services released late on Wednesday showed that the Rydges outbreak evolved into 10 different genomic clusters after it was spread during a "super spreading event".

It said that genomic samples of almost 1600 infections detected in the month from July 14 showed that all but 12 were linked to the botched hotel quarantine program at the Rydges Hotel.

The other dozen cases were linked to a cluster at the Stamford Hotel.

Of 5395 samples of coronavirus, taken between February 21 and August 14 and examined by DNA detectives, 3594 were found to be associated with the Rydges Hotel cluster, while 110 were linked to the Stamford Hotel cluster.

The genomic data has revealed that three people who returned home to Australia and quarantined at the Stamford Hotel were the first to become unwell in this genomic cluster. The Rydges cluster has been traced back to a family of four who arrived back from overseas in May.

With Sumeyya Ilanbey and Melissa Cunningham

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