Ferry farce

Below is a copy of a letter sent to Arran MSP Kenneth Gibson.

Sir, I wrote to you in December last year pleading with you to intervene in the developing fiasco which is the CalMac ferry service to the Isle of Arran. I hope you received this letter, I have not yet had an acknowledgement.

Since then of course, the service has been reduced to even more of a farce by frequent breakdowns of pieces of equipment on the MV Caledonian Isles. In recent weeks we have had a faulty exhaust valve on the port engine, a burst hydraulic pipe on the bow visor, and currently

a cracked gear box casing on a mooring winch which will take up to six weeks to repair. And for the last 24 hours, the mezzanine decks were out of action reducing the capacity on those sailings which did take place.

And recently, a piece of navigation equipment on shore failed so that the ship could not sail in the dark.

I am sure that the crew and engineers are doing all they can to keep this aged vessel in service and I have no quarrel with them, only admiration. However, the Scottish Government and the senior management of CMAL should be hanging their heads in shame that in the 21st century, in a supposedly first world country, such a state of affairs is allowed to continue with no apparent effort to remedy matters in the long term or, more importantly, provide immediate answers to the problem of reliably getting people to and from the island.

Yours,

Mrs E A Ross, Glenloig.