In offing,barricades along city beaches

Additional municipal commissioner Manisha Mhaiskar said in most cases,people have drowned depite being warned of the impending danger. “Our lifeguards as well as locals warn people against venturing into the sea. But many a times these warnings fall on deaf ears. To minimise the risk to lives,we are considering to close down the beaches on days when the high tide is higher than 4.5 metres and on days when it coincides with heavy rain. We are mulling over the possibility of the same,” said Mhaiskar.

The civic body will demarcate dangerous areas in the seas with red flags making certain portions of the beach open to swimmers and other portions out of bound. “However,that will take some time. The possible short-term solution is cordoning off beaches during risky times,” said Mhaiskar.

The BMC had employed 36 lifeguards in all for securing six beaches— Madh,Marve,Manori,Aksa,Juhu and Versova. But for the past six months,following the expiry of their contracts,only seven lifeguards have been manning all the six beaches now. To augment manpower,the civic body had decided to hand over the resposnibility of securing beaches to the Mumbai Fire Brigade from the public health department three months ago. As many as 120 firemen trained in flood rescue operations were given lifeguard training in Goa and are posted on beaches on days of high-tides. Despite these efforts,people continue to venture into the sea. “It is true that many people in the city do not have too many ways to unwind and relax. They come to beaches to cool their heels. However,if people do not pay heed to warnings,we will have to cordon off the beaches,” said Mhaiskar.

In 2008,BMC had proposed to implement the Baywatch beach safety model. As per the plan,trained lifeguards were supposed to man the watch towers with state-of-art equipment such as jet-ski and life jackets etc. But later,the Rs 3-crore proposal had been dropped citing ‘high costs’.