Goa's beach safety plan caught up in bureaucratic process

PANAJI: Goa's ambitious beach safety plan to arrest increasing drowning deaths is awaiting implementation as it has not been given financial sanction yet.

The plan envisages beach safety including life guards and constant monitoring of the beach stretches by installing CCTV cameras.
    
Tourism department officials confirmed that an agency has already been finalized to implement the plan but the financial sanction is awaited.
    
State Tourism Minister Fransisco Pacheco said the department was in the process of giving final touches to the proposal for the life safety along the beaches which he said is designed to reduce fatalities to near zero.
    
Commenting on increasing deaths due to drowning, the minister said the guests should execute self caution and remain away from danger zones.

"Self caution is the best option to counter inadequacy of the prevailing system of life guards," he added.
    
Elaborating further the life safety system, he said every visitor will be under the care of the arrangements by the agency.
    
"The functioning of the system will be monitored by high ranking officials through a specially designed software. It is an outcome of elaborate analysis and will involve state of art equipments," Pacheco said.
    
There is a requirement of more well equipped life guards to deal with any emergency, he added.