KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With sev­er­al peo­ple trag­i­cal­ly los­ing their lives at beach­es in 2021, Gov­ern­ment has to take some blame as it fails to pro­vide life­guards with the nec­es­sary re­sources to save cit­i­zens.

Ac­cord­ing to Na­tion­al Union for Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers’ (NUGFW) branch pres­i­dent of the Life­guard Ser­vice, Au­gus­tus Sylvester, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is aware that the unit does not have am­bu­lances, all-ter­rain ve­hi­cles (ATV), jet skis and in­flat­able res­cue boats need­ed to pro­tect cit­i­zens and tourists on the beach­es.

Last week, Au­gus­tus warned cit­i­zens ahead of the East­er week­end that they were at risk at the beach­es.

On Sun­day, fire of­fi­cer Stephen Mar­cano drowned while try­ing to save his niece, who was swept away by strong cur­rents on Ma­yaro beach. Mar­cano’s wife, Patrice, said she called for an am­bu­lance sev­er­al times af­ter rel­a­tives got him out of the wa­ter, but none came.

Mar­cano’s moth­er, Shirley Bass, be­lieves that if life­guards were pa­trolling the beach, her son would be alive.

On Mon­day, Shiv­anie Ramkar­ran drowned on a beach in Guayagua­yare.

Sylvester told Guardian Me­dia that Ma­yaro was among the top three dan­ger­ous beach­es in T&T as the open wa­ters face the At­lantic Ocean.

“Be­cause of the open­ness of Ma­yaro, there are a lot of strong winds, and you will get a lot of rip cur­rents. What hap­pens in Ma­yaro, peo­ple find a pool and tell them­selves that they do not have to go far out. That hole is where you have a rip cur­rent. 

“There is a change of tide every six hours, and they may bathe there for three hours. As the tide changes and you get more tur­bu­lence in the wa­ter, the cur­rent opens up and starts to pull peo­ple in­to the wa­ter. A safe place to bathe on the beach is where the ground is firm,” Sylvester said.

Life­guards were on the beach­es over the week­end. Sylvester said the shores of Ma­yaro is so vast that life­guards pa­trol four-eight ar­eas span­ning more than 500 kilo­me­tres.

“On a beach like Ma­yaro, it would not be any­thing strange to have peo­ple drown there every week. Es­pe­cial­ly a place like Ma­yaro where you have no mo­torised equip­ment like ATVs, jet skis and res­cue boats, so it is dif­fi­cult to pa­trol the area.”

Sylvester said that in 2018, the ser­vice had a fleet of 13 ve­hi­cles, in­clud­ing three am­bu­lances. To­day, none of them work. Fol­low­ing one of sev­er­al drown­ing last year, he sug­gest­ed that the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly sue the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for fail­ure to pro­tect cit­i­zens. He said the life­guards’ pleads to the min­istry for re­sources were ig­nored for years.

While staffing is one of sev­er­al is­sues, the ser­vice trained 60 peo­ple over the last decade but are yet to re­cruit any­one over that time. There are rough­ly 115 life­guards to pa­trol 10 beach­es be­tween 10 am-6 pm. How­ev­er, life­guards want a work­force of 200 guards to work ef­fi­cient­ly. In ad­di­tion to more face shields and de­fib­ril­la­tors, Sylvester said the life­guard tow­ers are in a state of dis­re­pair.

“The life­guard tow­ers are not func­tion­al. Peo­ple are van­dal­is­ing them, and at nights, those tow­ers be­come ho­tels and toi­lets. When we ar­rive at the beach­es in the morn­ings, we find con­doms and panties. Es­pe­cial­ly in these times of COVID-19, these ar­eas need to be clean. Not all are clean.”