Parliament hears submission for parademic funding

JULIA WADE

A community petition which made the rounds last year intent on bringing Mangawhai more permanent emergency staff, has finally landed in the hands of the Government.

Containing 2000 local signatures, the ‘Fully Paid Ambulance Services to Mangawhai’ petition was reviewed by the Parliamentary Health Committee (PHC) in late June.

“We’ve been plugging away at the petition for the past 15 months,” says petition co-coordinator Marion Pilmer. “After getting the 2000 signatures we presented the petition to our local Member of Parliament, Matt King, last May, who then presented it to the PHC, and we were delighted to hear the petition was accepted.”

The petition group was asked to present a submission to the PHC. Two members of the group, Sharon Radford and Marion Pilmer, attended the submission hearing in parliament via Zoom.

Pilmer and the rest of the group held ‘grave concerns’ at the lack of emergency ambulance services in Mangawhai.

The women can recall a time when the area was serviced by a ‘very efficient system’ - having a first-responder promptly attend a call-out, assess the injuries of the patient, arrange for a doctor or an ambulance and comfort the patient until emergency services had arrived. The responder was then free to stay in Mangawhai for the next call out.

“What we are asking for is a paid paramedic to be able to stay in Mangawhai,” she says. “I understand it’s a funding problem… however it’s a bit scary if you’re injured and laying on the ground for a few hours and not knowing what’s happening… people need reassurance that help is coming their way.”

Pilmer says herself and Radford were able to voice further concerns to their original submission including the impact of more residential properties with the development of Mangawhai Central, the northern motorway extension and Mangawhai Beach School being extended with ten more classrooms, which all add ‘a further significant drain on our under resourced community and further risk to the state of our emergency services’.

“We were very pleased with our presentation and the reactions from the select committee who appeared to receive our concerns very positively and with great interest… we now just have to wait for them to discuss our case,” Pilmer says.

“We look forward to further discussions before a decision is made but we are reasonably confident that changes regarding the future of Mangawhai’s emergency services will be made.”

The petition group would like to acknowledge the dedication and commitment of the St John volunteers who contribute many hours to the emergency service.

“We hope that there will be a positive outcome after a fairly long wait and we look forward to informing the residents further as we hear more. We are very grateful for the support we have received.”