|
An angry call is ringing out to British Telecom from islanders who have discovered that only four of the 20 telephone boxes on Arran actually work properly.
Those in Sannox, Lochranza and Lamlash will take no cash calls and Pirnmill, Catacol, Kildonan, Shannochie and Blackwaterfoot no longer work at all.
The Banner was also told that Whiting Bay’s only telephone box was burnt out two months ago and nothing has been done about it.
Now they say the situation is intolerable and want something done.
Shiskine community councillor Neil Arthur said: ‘The number of telephone boxes on the island is decreasing fast. I tried to save the one in Shiskine but the telephone has been ripped out, I think by BT. There are black-spots with mobile telephones and if a walker or cyclist needs one or there is a fire it isn’t there. It is convenient for BT to remove them.’
A Catacol resident who wished to remain anonymous said the service was intolerable.
‘The phone box in Catacol has been out of order for a very long time,’ he said. ‘My wife and I decided to try the one in Pirnmill, but it wasn’t working either. It really became a bit of a joke when we discovered that only the credit card operated phone in Lochranza was working properly.’
He added that there were no working telephone boxes in the north of Arran. Brian Couper and his wife Irene from Shannochie were left without a phone line for five weeks late last year.
In trying to contact BT for updates, Mr Couper found that the phone box at Shannochie post office was not working.
He contacted Arran’s MSP Kenneth Gibson who then asked BT to check all callboxes on Arran were in working condition as there were reports that at least two did not work.
Mr Gibson told the Banner: ‘I had a long conversation with Ian Shanks, BT’s head of Scottish affairs, and he told me that BT are only aware of call boxes being inoperable if a fault is reported, although one would have thought that BT would routinely check those from which calls are not being made. They do not.
‘I have asked Mr Shanks to consider this and he agreed. Meanwhile islanders can either report a broken telephone by simply giving the telephone number to BT (using another phone, if available, by internet or in writing), or they can describe/indicate the location of the phone. When reported the call box will be repaired within a couple of weeks.’
In the past, Arran’s councillor, Margie Currie, has tried to get BT to maintain the boxes properly.
She said: ‘It is almost impossible to get anyone from BT to take any interest in this problem. Any efforts made in the past to counter the service problems have been unsuccessful. What needs to happen is for someone to take responsibility for the phone boxes and get them fixed.’
When asked about the telephone boxes on Arran, a BT spokesman said: ‘Our last reported fault was almost a month ago. Our payphones are self-diagnosing so they report their own faults. This appears not to have happened but our Openreach engineers on the island who also look after the payphones are investigating and we will get them back into service. It is too early to say what the problem has been.’
