On Fri­day, Min­is­ter of Tourism Stephen Cadiz set aside the tra­di­tion­al re­quire­ments of the first day of East­er wor­ship to ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress the con­cerns of life­guards who had threat­ened strike ac­tion if the min­istry didn't set­tle over­due back­pay ne­go­ti­at­ed in the 2008-2010 col­lec­tive agree­ment.

Min­is­ter Cadiz is to be com­mend­ed for re­al­is­ing that the $10 mil­lion pay de­mand paled in sig­nif­i­cance to the dan­gers in­her­ent in a full-scale strike by life­guards over a four-day week­end that draws thou­sands to beach­es na­tion­wide.

The life­guards were al­so heart­ened by the min­is­ter's promise to ad­dress some of their oth­er con­cerns, which have been ar­tic­u­lat­ed re­peat­ed­ly over the last two years.

In Sep­tem­ber 2010, Mara­cas life­guards aban­doned their posts, protest­ing the work­ing con­di­tions at the pop­u­lar beach. Re­pairs and con­struc­tion work at the beach and a fail­ure to plan for the needs of the guards led to the ir­reg­u­lar sug­ges­tion that life­guards man­age their over­sight du­ties us­ing the bath­room fa­cil­i­ties as their base.

In June 2011, To­co coun­cil­lor Ter­ry Ron­don begged for life­guards and toi­let fa­cil­i­ties at Saly­bia af­ter two drown­ing in­ci­dents took place on suc­ces­sive week­ends at the pop­u­lar bathing beach.

A month lat­er the mes­sage seemed to have got through as the gov­ern­ment re­spond­ed to the short­fall in life­guards and the tourism min­is­ter of the day, Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith, launched a re­cruit­ment cam­paign to get more life­guards qual­i­fied.

By Au­gust 2011, Dr Grif­fith was able to grad­u­ate 33 life­guards, the prod­uct of a re­cruit­ment dri­ve two years ear­li­er, which pro­duced new grad­u­ates af­ter a 24-month train­ing pro­gramme in life­sav­ing.

Fast for­ward to Jan­u­ary 2013 and Tourism Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz an­nounces a new plan to re­view the act un­der which life­guards are man­aged with a view to cre­at­ing a pro­fes­sion­al life­guard ser­vice.

It's clear­ly some­thing that's quite des­per­ate­ly need­ed. Life­guards work Mon­day to Sun­day, re­port­ing for du­ty at 10 am and leav­ing at 5.30 pm. Mr Cadiz an­nounced in Jan­u­ary that there were cur­rent­ly 200 life­guards (now 250) pa­trolling six beach­es around Trinidad, Ma­yaro, Man­zanil­la, Mara­cas, Las Cuevas, Ves­signy and Saly­bia. The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly man­ages life­guard ser­vices for To­ba­go.

De­spite the small com­ple­ment of life­guards, their com­plaints in­clude a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Gov­ern­ment about their long stand­ing re­quests.

Mara­cas Bay, of­ten a busy beach, re­mains a sore point for the life­guards as­signed there and Mr Cadiz had lit­tle good news to of­fer on that front. The orig­i­nal $265 mil­lion re­fur­bish­ment project has been halt­ed and new con­trac­tors are be­ing sought.

The project, the tourism min­is­ter not­ed, has been down­scaled and fresh con­sul­ta­tions sought with the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers.

It should seem a lit­tle sur­pris­ing to any­one that a pro­fes­sion named "life guard­ing" should be so poor­ly man­aged and sup­port­ed that its prac­ti­tion­ers would se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er po­ten­tial­ly lethal strike ac­tion.

Clear­ly the Gov­ern­ment must ad­vance its plans to cre­ate a pro­fes­sion­al corps of life­guards ca­pa­ble of over­see­ing bathers at all of our most pop­u­lar beach­es.

Such an ini­tia­tive would be most ef­fec­tive­ly sup­port­ed by prop­er fa­cil­i­ties, train­ing and on­go­ing safe­ty ed­u­ca­tion of the bathers who en­joy our beach­es.

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