Watch out for restaurant’s outside deck
"This needs to be addressed urgently before another much worse incident occurs.”
A woman reported to the RECORD that, on Friday 23 March, her mother sustained bruises when the outside wooden deck of Piatto broke beneath her chair. Her email reads as follows:
“I would like to share with you a recent incident that occurred at Piatto Alberton. My mother and I went there last week Friday (23 March 2017) for some late afternoon drinks and a meal. We were seated outside on the deck area and after ordering drinks, my mother adjusted herself in her chair. The next moment, she fell backwards violently. We initially thought the chair broke, but it would come to light that a part of a wooden deck – which looks extremely worn out and damaged – had broken right underneath one of the chair legs.
“Very luckily, my mother did not require medical attention, although she was bruised. It could have been much worse, as her head was swung backwards. After the fall (which happened in front of at least 15 to 20 other patrons), we were moved to another table on the deck. (I no longer wanted to eat there but the manager insisted.) They left the hole in the deck just as is, with waiters even attempting to seat more patrons there a little later. Only after I asked them not to have anyone sit there, did they decide to cover the hole by putting an umbrella stand over it.
“I emphasised that they should rebuild the deck before more people get injured. The manager assured me that he has raised the issue with management and they promised to fix it. I requested the owner’s details, but by Tuesday I had still not received a reply to my email, so I decided to phone him. I could not reach him and he did not return my urgent messages until a few calls later, on Wednesday afternoon.
“In his reply, he thanked me for bringing this to his attention, but he mentioned that fixing the deck would be a long and costly process, so they will only be doing it in the winter months.
I feel this is completely unacceptable – they are brushing this incident under the carpet and just continuing to seat people on that unstable deck. This needs to be addressed urgently before another much worse incident occurs.”
Piatto’s manager, Victor Mlalazi, responded to the email: “We are very sorry about what happened to the lady. Unfortunately we cannot redo the entire deck straight away, because the company who will do it said it will take around 15 days to do it. Because of this long period, they will only have time to fix it during winter months.”
He adds: “In the meantime we’ve made a temporary solution. We checked which parts of the deck are dangerous and we nailed solid wooden planks over the rickety parts of the deck, and we haven’t had another incident.”
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