KEY POINTS:
Charities are alarmed at mounting numbers of volunteers quitting because they can't afford rising petrol costs.
The Auckland Cancer Society and Meals on Wheels have both lost volunteer drivers since petrol prices passed $2 a litre last month.
The Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society says the number of
family visits to prisoners has also dropped in the past two months because of petrol prices.
BP offers petrol vouchers for volunteers but says applications have far exceeded the amount of money available, which is confidential.
Shell and Chevron (Caltex) do not have any similar schemes and Mobil did not return calls.
Papakura cancer patient Bronwyn Gore, 50, said she depended on the Cancer Society's volunteer drivers such as 83-year-old Joe Clark to get to daily radiotherapy appointments at Auckland City Hospital, a round trip of 70km.
"My family are scattered and the only family member in this direction works fulltime, so I've had to rely on the volunteer drivers," she said.
"It means the difference between me having all my treatments and having to miss out because I can't get into the hospital. If it wasn't for the volunteer drivers I don't know where I'd be."
Mr Clark, who has been a volunteer driver for 12 years, said he could afford to keep going. But Cancer Society support services manager Faye Kenny said other drivers had begun to resign in the past two weeks because they could no longer afford it.
"Even though we've offered more petrol vouchers, I think they felt that the whole cost - the maintenance of the car and everything else about providing that service - is just beyond them," she said.
The society gives out $28,000 worth of petrol coupons a year, but Ms Kenny said that covered only a fraction of the costs of the 500 volunteers.
"We are really concerned that that is rapidly not going to be enough so we are going to have to raise that money somehow."
The Meals on Wheels co-ordinator for Central and South Auckland, Karen Clare, said she'd noticed more volunteers resigning partly because of petrol prices in the past few months.
Her counterpart for North and West Auckland, Jan Smith, said she had started noticing the same trend just in the past fortnight.
Red Cross, which runs the scheme in Auckland, pays its 1100 volunteer drivers just $2.50 a day as a contribution to petrol costs.
"I still get a lot of people who donate their petrol money back because they want to contribute. But for some others, it's difficult," Mrs Smith said.
Prisoners Aid national director Lyanne Kerr said her group received $72,000 a year from the Corrections Department to help families visit prisoners in jail, but that meant only $20 to $40 each for trips that often cost much more than that.
"We've had a real drop-off in the last few months where people who were going monthly are now going two-monthly or twice a year," she said.
BP's "Vouchers for Volunteers" scheme attracted more than 3000 applications when launched in 2006 and more than 1100 last year, but only 317 organisations were granted vouchers.
Spokeswoman Diana Stretch said the scheme would be run again this year but the dates were not yet decided and the amount available was "commercially sensitive".
The scheme is for not-for-profit agencies whose volunteers do significant driving as part of their volunteer work. Shell said it helped volunteers through its sponsorship of Barnardos and Chevron (Caltex) said it did its bit by sponsoring the Starship hospital.
* To volunteer for the Cancer Society ring (09) 308-0244.
www.cancersocietyauckland.org.nz
www.redcross.org.nz
www.pars.org.nz
