00:00When you live on an island, just about any day is beach day for most people.
00:05Maracas Bay is one of the most popular beaches located on the north coast.
00:10And now that the July-August vacation is here, it means a lot of families will be traveling to the popular beach.
00:16But there's one problem.
00:19A dilemma lifeguards say they face often, and one that has had some serious consequences.
00:24A shortage of personal and lack of basic resources.
00:27Well, one of the main issues we're experiencing is towers.
00:33We have no towers on the beach.
00:37We work in short staff.
00:39We have no ambulance.
00:42We have no ring cloaks.
00:45We have no medical.
00:46So right now lifeguards work in blind.
00:49But when I came in here in 92, it had 37 lifeguards.
00:54Now it have 17 and one online duty.
00:58So yeah, let's say 16.
00:59According to patrol captain Carl Hernandez, lifeguards has been raising these concerns for years.
01:06But their management and subsequent governments seems to not be taking the red flags seriously.
01:12He added that because there are no lifeguard towers on the beach, they have to be on constant foot patrol.
01:17So at the moment, what do you guys use as a quote-unquote tower?
01:21Well, as I see, the building.
01:24This building?
01:25Yeah, upstairs.
01:27And as we see, point out the crowd, look, when you put down flags, we know certain currencies.
01:32So we'll get on patrol one then.
01:34Whether it rain or what, we know we have to go.
01:37He says the towers were to be built since Carnival of last year.
01:41This whole thing was to finish the show because they were to bring it and just bolt it up.
01:46The communists bolt the nuts and put it together.
01:51So they have no excuse for these seven towers.
01:54Hernandez says all the lifeguards are really asking for is a little respect from the powers that be,
02:00adding that in a perfect world, there would be at least 150 lifeguards in the service.
02:05We have a lot of trainees, the 27 lifeguards service, it's 13 years.
02:13Just the same way they do as firemen and bring the auxiliary staff, we need the staff, very important.
02:19As we say, everything keep, the car park was small.
02:23They expired because more people come down the beach.
02:28There's more lifeguards you will need, more facility workers you will need to clean the beach.
02:32Their living quarters also pose problems for the lifeguards.
02:36We were shown broken floor tiles, a cracked ceiling and a kitchen that was too close to the toilets.
02:43Hernandez is pleading with the new government to hear their plead and improve their working conditions.
02:47Charlotte Kisto, TV6 News.
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