Trinidad: Lifeguards at Maracas Bay continue strike after beach-goer drowns

Raj Sonnylal, 29, died at hospital after getting into difficulties at Maracas Bay on Sunday.
Raj Sonnylal, 29, died at hospital after getting into difficulties at Maracas Bay on Sunday.

(Trinidad Guardian) Life­guards at Mara­cas Bay are ad­vis­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to stay away, say­ing they will be go­ing at their own risk.

The warn­ing came on the heels of week­end’s walk­out of on-du­ty life­guards as re­cent se­ri­ous health and safe­ty con­cerns in the past three weeks have failed to be ad­dressed by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

The life­guards are now de­mand­ing a meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as they claim that there are on­ly “emp­ty promis­es” met­ed out by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

Young last met with them re­gard­ing their is­sues last year Sep­tem­ber and to date, none of their is­sues have been re­solved.

On Sun­day morn­ing the av­er­age ten life­guards re­port­ed for du­ty, how­ev­er, all of them de­part­ed their re­spec­tive posts at about 11 am.

Less than one hour af­ter, a beach­go­er got in­to dif­fi­cul­ties.

He was iden­ti­fied as Raj Son­ny­lal, 29, of Pe­nal, who was em­ployed with Lifestyle Mo­tors.

Maracas Bay lifeguards are warning beachgoers that they will be going to the beach at their own risks as the lifeguards are upset over health and safety issues.

Life­guards from Las Cuevas Beach took 30 min­utes to re­spond af­ter Son­ny­lal was brought to shore.

He was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he died overnight.

In a Face­book post, Lifestyle Mo­tors ex­pressed heart­felt con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly and loved ones of their col­league.

“Raj Son­ny­lal, gone too soon. The Lifestyle Mo­tors fam­i­ly would like to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­press our con­do­lences to Raj’s fam­i­ly. friends and cowork­ers. Our prayers are with you as we say good­bye to a young man who has im­pact­ed us all,” the post read.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Tues­day, spokesper­son for the life­guards, Au­gus­tus Sylvester said for the past three weeks life­guards at Mara­cas Bay are faced with se­ri­ous wa­ter prob­lems and raw sewage leak­ing in­to the ground floor of the two-storey build­ing.

“Out of six toi­lets – three up­stairs and three down­stairs on­ly one down­stairs is work­ing. The oth­er one down­stairs is bub­bling and leak­ing raw sewage in­side the build­ing which is very un­san­i­tary for us. Al­so, there is no wa­ter in the show­ers on­ly a trick­le in the foot pipe,” Sylvester said.

“The build­ing is al­so plagued with rat drop­pings and the equip­ment in the stores are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. We can­not func­tion un­der those con­di­tions and these are things un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act,” he added.

Au­gus­tus who joined the ser­vice 32 years ago said there have been ex­ist­ing is­sues since back then.

“Ba­sic things we don’t have which is no mo­torised equip­ment, no boat, no jet skis and no mod­ern ful­ly equipped am­bu­lance…We are work­ing with 1943 equip­ment and as though we are in cave­man days. In the last four years it has got­ten worst,” Sylvester said.

Sylvester al­so raised the is­sue of the ser­vice be­ing se­vere­ly short staffed and added that in the last decade they have trained 30 peo­ple and not one has been hired, “We look­ing on…imag­ine the main­te­nance sec­tion re­cent­ly took in 21 peo­ple so what’s their em­pha­sis? Is it the clean­ing of the beach or the preser­va­tion of lives?”

For the rest of the week and un­til their health and safe­ty is­sues are ad­dressed, Sylvester said life­guards will con­tin­ue to re­port dai­ly to work, sign the book and leave af­ter two hours, “the num­ber one rule in life­guard ser­vice is that our own safe­ty comes first be­fore any oth­er.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the life­guard build­ing Tues­day af­ter­noon work­ers were seen car­ry­ing out plumb­ing re­pairs to the wa­ter pump and of­fi­cials from a pest con­trol com­pa­ny were seen ad­dress­ing the rat in­fes­ta­tion prob­lem and car­ry­ing out san­i­ti­za­tion works.

A life­guard on du­ty said not un­til all the im­me­di­ate health and safe­ty is­sues are ad­dressed the life­guards will re­turn to their re­spec­tive posts.

Re­me­di­al works are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by week’s end.

Some beach­go­ers at the flag­ship beach Tues­day ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment in the fail­ure to ad­dress the press­ing is­sues faced by the life­guards and are hope­ful for an im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.