Multiple proposals to fight water-related disasters continue to remain on the drawing board even as backwaters in the city claimed yet another life on Thursday.
Four years back, the then Revenue Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan had proposed taluk-level teams of expert divers to overcome loss of time in the golden hour waiting for divers from the Navy or Coast Guard for rescue operations. When it didn’t take off owing to the government reluctance for funding, the district administration tried to elicit private sponsorship.
The former District Collector P.I. Sheikh Pareed had even written to the Goa-based National Institute of Water Sports (NIWS) asking to depute experts to select candidates for the proposed divers’ team. The idea was to have a team of five divers in all seven taluks in the district. But the absence of funds stalled that as well.
Death toll could have been higher
Going slow on the proposal came back to haunt the district when a boat accident in Fort Kochi claimed 11 lives last August. If not for the urgency shown by the local community police, the death toll would have been higher.
That prompted the district administration to think of local community-level task forces to fight disasters. However, follow-up measures in that direction got delayed.
Eventually, when District Collector M.G. Rajamanickam convened a meeting on Thursday afternoon to discuss the proposal, it coincided with the tragedy at Bolghatty. “We will fast-track the proposal and convene a meeting of stakeholders shortly. Tourist locations would be mapped and community task forces drawn from among tourist guides, boat workers and local traders would be created.
The Fort Kochi boat tragedy reaffirmed the fact that training and equipping local community was the best way to deal with disasters,” Mr. Rajamanickam said.
In the immediate aftermath of the Fort Kochi tragedy, he had held interactions with members of the local community who had actively participated in rescue operations and asked them to identify people, especially youngsters, willing to volunteer for rescue operations.
The multiple hazard-zonation map prepared by the District Disaster Management Authority would be the basis for developing the kind of task forces for respective areas.Youth still missing
The whereabouts of Bineesh, who had gone missing on Thursday after the water scooter accident on Kochi backwaters, remained unknown.
The search operations held on Friday yielded no results.
