News today: Health NZ pays $190m to fix holiday pay
Health New Zealand, the national health service, has spent over $190 million to correct holiday pay errors affecting tens of thousands of current and former staff. While most current employees have already received their repayments, the agency is still working to process payments for former workers. In other health news, several cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed among patients at Kenepuru Hospital in Porirua, a city north of Wellington.
Emergency services are responding to several serious incidents across the country. In the Gisborne region, nine vehicles were sent to a major traffic incident on Wharekopae Road. North of Wellington, a serious two-vehicle crash has closed the southbound lane of State Highway 1, the country's main road. Near Auckland, one person was seriously injured after a car crashed into a house in Stanmore Bay, and a pilot escaped with minor injuries after a light helicopter crashed in Dairy Flat.
At the former Marsden Point oil refinery in Northland, a worker was rescued after becoming critically ill at the bottom of a 20-meter deep tank. Additionally, a New Zealand Air Force crew located a solo fisherman who had been missing for more than a week in the northern Cook Islands. He was found alive in his four-meter boat.
For more details on these stories and others, visit the News section in the app. Read about a mother and son creating Football World Cup history and why a new romance-only bookstore is opening in Wellington.