Australia’s largest homegrown information technology services company, Datacom announced job openings needing 600 people to assist them with contact tracing across New Zealand. People facing the wrath of alert level 4 lockdown were motivated to apply for the vacancies amid the Delta outbreak. Applicants who could speak Samoan and Tongan were preferred for the jobs. 

UPtempo, a unique programme to assess work progression and how to earn more money in association with its partner, the Pasifika community was fielding the applications. The applications have been shut off as more than 2000 Kiwis applied for the jobs. 

Datacom said that all the successful applicants will earn decent amounts of money for customer service consultant roles. Most will be paid $28 dollars or above per hour- the pro rata equivalent of $54,600 annually. Alexandra Mercer, Datacom's head of group marketing and communications said, "These contracts are short-term because of the issue they are dealing with," She hoped that this would pave the way for the applicants to surf for more customer-service type roles.

Mercer also stated that Datacom is trying to find partners throughout the country to explore these pathways. She took the example of UPtempo and applauded the superlative work they are doing by establishing connections with communities. Mercer reiterated Datacom’s idea to support New Zealand in the COVID-19 crisis and meet the needs of the community aggravated by the alert level 4 lockdown.

As the current workforce is on the run after coming in contact with more contact tracers in the face of Delta breakout, the crisis has deepened as it has produced more than 15,000 contacts and over 400 locations of interest. With the Delta outbreak taking a reprehensible shape, it is also inducing the Ministry of Health to extricate its "gold standard" of informing at least 80 percent of potential contacts within 48 hours of detecting a new case of COVID-19.

Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall said that the current scale of contact tracing is operating at an "industrial" level now and new methods have to be devised to tackle this problem.