Anger grows over delay in fixing life-saving mast

VODAFONE has said it will fix a life-saving mast ‘as soon as it can’ but after five weeks waiting already volunteers don’t have much faith it will be anytime soon.

While pagers remain silent because of a mast problem on Mull, emergency first responder teams on the west coast are being forced to sit by the phone.

The pager mast allows first responder teams on the isle of Luing to carry on life as normal until alerted when a problem arises. One of the busiest teams of volunteers on the west coast, a problem with the Vodafone mast has brought the service and the volunteers to a standstill.

Even the protests of constituency MSP Michael Russell cannot speed up the service. Mr Russell said: ‘It is a disgraceful service to an island community and Vodafone is failing to listen to their customers.’

Fiona Cruickshanks, chairwoman of Luing Emergency First Responders, said: ‘These pagers have been ‘off’ since the weekend of November 21, 2015.

‘I have been relentless in my pursuit of a resolution in this matter and have been given various reports about this problem.

‘This not only affects pagers for Luing Community First Responders, it also affects the ferry operators’ pagers, who provide ferry access to the island for police, ambulance, fire and coastguard. Without these pagers working, the ferry operators and the first responders have to rely on landline communication, which is not always available.

‘This is causing massive inconvenience for the health and safety of the people on Luing. It was only with MSP Mike Russell and help that this was resolved the last time.’

A spokeswoman for Vodafone said: ‘ We’re sorry some customers have been affected by signal issues. We need to replace some hardware. We’ll get this in place as soon as we can.’