Just going home from sea rescue in uniform, i was stopped at a petrol station the attendant asked me how i got my job as a volunteer sea rescuer. I explained its voluntary and unpaid, she thought its a paid job. My wife tells me lots of her friends at school think the same. We must get this message spread far and wide BOTH the government (DFES) administered VMR AND the independent charity VSR groups ALL are UNPAID volunteers and rely on volunteers to run. Additionally the independent groups (Whitfords and Cockburn) are funded by donations and even the govmnt controlled groups are charities and often need donations on top. It unites us ALL....VMR / VSR we are like SES or Bush fire brigade all unpaid and reliant on donations. The only things our volunteers get for free are - 1. Soft drinks when on duty (meetings we pay for them) 2. Training courses (we pay for them ourselves after a year of service we can claim for them but many of us dont) 3. The satisfaction of either rescuing ppl ourselves or of seeing our team mates do it and being part of the team 4. Sunscreen....but we buy our own uniforms All this means that we are able to have rescue boats spaced regularly around our massive coast for a minimum of tax. Just like the bush fire service if they were all paid it would be impossible to cover a state this size with a tax base of only 2mln ppl (about 1mln taxpayers). Even in UK (the size of albany to geraldton with 70 mln ppl) sea rescue is almost entirely voluntary run by UKs largest charity the RNLI - Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Similar in Holland (KNRM), France (SNSM), South Africa (NSRI), NZ (Volunteer coastguard), and other Aussie states (Australian Volunteer Coastguard). Volunteers are charity workers! Please help spread the word that Volunteer Sea Rescue is unpaid and ask your mates to stick some loose change in the coin boxes or better yet join as a supporter $40 a year. Thanks for reading.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 10:12:10 +0000
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