After a number of recent incidents causing injury at the inner harbour boat ramp, one of them to myself, I want to call out Gisborne District Council and its contracted staff over the inadequacy of maintaining the ramp — ie, cleaning it of slime and debris.
The lack of effective cleaning has been raised numerous times, about the poor workmanship shown by contracted staff in cleaning the inner harbour boat ramp. Clearly there is no accountability or follow-up by GDC to ensure that the ramp is being cleaned satisfactorily. It seems only when an incident occurs that GDC takes note and action is taken.
While I acknowledge that using the inner harbour ramp comes with a certain amount of risk, and the boating community uses it at their risk — as would be the case with many other community facilities — nonetheless, Gisborne District Council cannot absolve itself from adequately maintaining its assets. In fact, it has a duty of care to ensure the public are not put at any undue risk.
Since bringing this latest incident to GDC attention I have been informed that some further steps have been taken to mitigate this issue, with those being weekly cleaning of the ramp at low tide (as opposed to fortnightly) as well as an audit pre-cleaning and post-cleaning.
Let’s hope all this does indeed help alleviate the risk to ramp users, but I would urge those using the ramp to contact GDC if they don’t feel the situation has improved, or if they have any incidents — no matter how minor it may be.
Craig Miller
