Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Faced with two drown­ings over the East­er week­end, the T&T Life Sav­ing So­ci­ety has re­newed its call for Gov­ern­ment to hire more life­guards to pa­trol T&T's beach­es.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent Ann Singh said more than 100 peo­ple were cer­ti­fied an­nu­al­ly by the so­ci­ety with the hope they could be em­ployed by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

"There are many cer­ti­fied life­savers who want to be em­ployed as a life­guard.

We work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Cana­di­an Life Sav­ing So­ci­ety and we are try­ing to min­imise drown­ings so it is re­al­ly sad that so many peo­ple drowned over the long week­end," Singh said.

Among those who drowned were 61-year-old Beville Si­mon­ette, of Tacarigua, who drowned in Mara­cas and Trevin Lal­la, 31, of Bal­main, Cou­va, who drowned at Guayagua­yare on Mon­day.

Singh said dur­ing long week­ends when more peo­ple were like­ly to go to the beach­es the Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er hir­ing more life­guards to pa­trol.

She al­so called on mem­bers of the pub­lic al­ways to obey the in­struc­tion and ad­vice of life­guards, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they im­posed re­stric­tions on spe­cif­ic bathing ar­eas.

"Peo­ple dis­obey the life­guards and take too many risks. You should al­ways speak to life­guards first if you are un­cer­tain about the sea con­di­tions be­fore you go in­to the wa­ter," Singh said.

She added that guards work from 10 am to 6 pm, yet peo­ple go in­to un­safe ar­eas be­fore guards take up of­fi­cial du­ty.

"We have an on­go­ing pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion dri­ve in sev­er­al schools along with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Our aim is to take pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to min­imise drown­ings," Singh said. Asked to con­firm re­ports that life­guard equip­ment used at Mara­cas Bay was dys­func­tion­al, Singh said she had no in­for­ma­tion on that.

How­ev­er, a life­guard, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, claimed the in­flat­able rafts and jet skis used to pa­trol the beach­es were in need of main­te­nance.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for com­ment, a se­nior of­fi­cial at the Life Guard De­part­ment of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry said that was not so.

He al­so de­nied there was a short­age of life­guards.

Say­ing that re­cruit­ment takes place reg­u­lar­ly, the of­fi­cial said each guard had to un­der­go two years of train­ing be­fore he could of­fi­cial­ly take up du­ty.

The source al­so said that in some ar­eas, life­guards took up work be­fore 10 am.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon and per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Sime­on Year­wood were en­gaged in meet­ings and did not re­spond to ques­tions.

A list of ques­tions was sent to the min­istry's Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment but up to press time, there was no re­sponse to them.