Dear Editor,
I do thank Captain REW Adams, MNI, for his response captioned, ‘Life jackets used in Guyana are not buoyancy aids,’ (GC November 4, 2008) to my letter titled ‘Buoyancy aids’ (SN October 27). I must hasten to say that my letter was not intended to be published in the Stabroek News’ letter columns; it was only sent as a blogger’s comment under a report on the recent Corentyne River tragedy. The editorial department of that newspaper decided to publish it as a letter as a matter of public concern. Right now I have little time to go into a detailed description of the application of Archimedes’ principle to lifejackets. Nevertheless, I must bow to the more expert knowledge of Captain Adams in his field.
His Archimedian physics is spot on. However, without my initial letter, the good captain would not have been prodded to bestow upon the Guyanese public such detailed and intimate knowledge of lifejackets in the wake of the recent tragedy.
We should take particular note that the two persons to survive that disaster did so with the help of 5-gallon buckets and not only the lifejackets they were wearing. We need to ask why? One blogger in Stabroek News asserted that some speedboat operators are using lifejackets made of ordinary water-absorbent foam covered with a nylon material. If so, this is not a lifejacket but a death jacket.
I know that Captain Adams is a very busy man, as all good captains should be, but I earnestly crave his indulgence to address the issue of the quality of lifejackets used in speedboats and also the question that begs an answer, “What then is a buoyancy aid?” Someone’s life may depend on the correct information that he supplies. After all, public safety on Guyana’s waterways is more his stock-in-trade than it is mine.
Yours faithfully,
M. Xiu Quan-Balgobind-Hackett
