Flood help for members

The Motor Trade Association (MTA) has been contacting its members across Auckland to see if they need help following last month’s floods.

Sean Stevens, membership services manager, says: “We’ve set up people in our call centre to be dedicated to phoning around our 1,300 members in the greater Auckland area.

“We’re proactively ringing those people, especially in the worst-affected areas, to find out if they have been impacted from a business or personal perspective – and to see what we can do to help.

“There are some businesses that have had significant loss. The bulk of those are in the Wairau Valley and Brown’s Bay areas, and are related to culverts that flooded.”

He told Autofile Online all MTA members’ businesses are individually owned and have their own insurers, so the association is working with insurance companies to ensure they understand their policies. 

“We’re also helping members through the claims process, and trying to support them to get back up and running,” adds Stevens, pictured.

“Most of those badly affected have had their premises flooded, which can be tidied up and redecorated. But the biggest effect is loss of stock. In some cases, that’s parts. In others, it’s vehicles, motorbikes and even some trailers.”

The MTA received reports that some dealers in the Wairau Valley area of Auckland’s North Shore were under 1.5 metres of water. Some of its members would have spent a few days mopping up and were likely to be back in business by the end of last week.

However, Stevens says it may take some of them a few weeks until they are able to reopen. “Because there are such wide and varied effects on business owners, we’re just dealing with them on a case-by-case basis and doing what we can to help them.”