----------------------------------------------------------- Do GOACAN a favour, circulate this email to your family members, relatives, neighbours and friends. Help others be BETTER INFORMED, The time is come for the people of Goa to ORGANISE not AGONISE !! ---------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------ Documented by Goa Desc Resource Centre (GDRC) Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------- Handicap of Lifeguards -- Govt. must pay heed ----------------------------------------------------- Editorial
Lifeguards have not been able to do a satisfactory work on the state's beaches. So, in most cases, whether someone gets drowned or not depends much on the providence and the efforts of locals or other tourists. To some extent, it is due to lifeguards being in inadequate number and even those without proper rescue equipment and training. Not long ago, a student from Kerala was saved from drowning by a foreigner who rushed to his aid with a jet ski. Unfortunately three of his friends were drowned. It is really intriguing why the state government is reluctant to employ or hire trained lifeguards fully equipped with life-saving devices and equipments. The government's reluctance is manifest from the 80 -odd lifeguards resorting to indefinite strike from Thursday demanding better life- saving equipment, besides regularisation of services and reumuneration hike. It is indeed a matter of concern that many of these lifeguards have been working on contractual basis for more than four years. It is really a shame for a government which claims to care for its people and tourists that the persons who are supposed to save other persons' lives by staking their own are denied of a secure future. This averseness of the government is nothing but a cruel joke on promotion of tourism; as a result, the beaches of Goa, the ultimate tourist destination, are turning out to be killer beaches. Even for a layman it would be a tough proposition to find a compatible ratio between the number of tourists and the number of guards; it comes around .004 guard for one tourist, or in other words we have one guard for every 25000 tourists. Goa has 20 prominent beaches; how could the government think of providing adequate security to 20 lakh odd tourists visiting state every year? There has to be some kind of rationale. The entire mechanism of deploying lifeguards is similar to the guards provided for manning any establishment by the private security agencies and nothing more. This itself exposes the fallacy of the government claim of providing well-trained guards equipped with latest life-saving devices. In this matter the police have no confusion about their role, because they can do precious little. Their task is to check crime on the beaches. At best they can offer advice, but have no manpower to constitute a lifeguard force. With the drowning deaths systematically on rise, the government must adopt a serious approach to the problem. It must listen to the voices of the lifeguards, provide them necessary equipments and the one thing which it can do is to make the lifeguard a part of the state police set-up. While they will get required training, they will also acquire some kind of right to pull up and punish the recalcitrant tourists unwilling to heed their suggestions, when and how to go into the sea. This would in turn make the guards accountable to the state police for their own actions and conducts. -------------------------------------- The Navhind Times 12/8/06 page 10 -------------------------------------- ====================================== GOA DESC RESOURCE CENTRE Documentation + Education + Solidarity 11 Liberty Apts., Feira Alta, Mapusa, Goa 403 507 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------- Working On Issues Of Development & Democracy ====================================== _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
