TECHNICIANS working on the national broadband network roll-out in the ACT may have been exposed to deadly asbestos fibres according to a union official who says ''it's reasonably common'' for workers to find asbestos in Telstra pits.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
While it is safe to work around pits containing concrete asbestos if it is undisturbed, the network required many pits to be removed and replaced with larger ones.
Such remediation work was called to a halt last week after it was discovered asbestos was improperly handled at several pits, most notably in western Sydney.
Comcare, the federal health and safety agency, issued the order but Telstra has committed to keep the stop-work in place until contractors and sub-contractors ''have completed further training on working with, removing, transporting and disposing of asbestos-containing material''.
Assistant secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, Neville Betts, would like to see professional asbestos removers hired to get rid of the affected pits before the installation of new ones by network workers.
''You don't put an ad in the paper 'we need people to work on the cable roll-out' then send them down the street, say 'here you go, whack a pair of paper overalls and a paper mask on and have a go - asbestos, smash these bits up','' he said.
Mr Betts said he had met a number of younger workers who had removed asbestos with no more than a face mask for protection.
He said they were largely unaware of the dangers of mesothelioma, and not properly trained to deal with asbestos.
It's an example of what the unions have labelled ''systemic asbestos safety failures'' in the network roll-out, which has come from a pyramid of subcontracting on the massive national project.
There are millions of pits around the country, but Telstra cannot say how many pits are in the ACT, nor how many might contain asbestos, a substance they stopped using in the mid-1980s.
''Our network has been rolled out over a 100-year period in different places at different times. Our pits that do contain asbestos were installed before the health issues associated with asbestos were known so no records were kept of what the pits were made of,'' Telstra spokesman Scott Whiffin said.
Officials from the Electrical Trades Union and the Communications Electrical Plumbing Union held a meeting in Canberra on Thursday with Telstra, which they described as positive.
Telstra has committed to hire up to 200 people to ''ensure all asbestos-related remediation activity is supervised by an accredited person'' and has appointed independent advisers and a director to oversee asbestos management.
