Some accidents are truly accidents and one can term it as an act of fate. Then there some accidents that are not an act of fate, but glaring negligence of people responsible for the accident. The tragic incident at Canaguinim where three Russian women tourists lost their lives to me is not an accident, but murder.
It is a murder because both the tour operator and boat-owner & operator failed in their primary responsibility to ensure the safety of the passengers. Goa along with States like Gujarat were put on high alert owing to the movements of Cyclone Nilofer, one would have expected a certain prudence from the tour operator and boat-owner & operator to not venture into the seas with passengers in expected volatile & dangerous weather conditions. A blind-eye was turned to this crucial fact and unfortunately the boat hit a rough sea-patch and over turned with the passengers in it (some of whom were children). More importantly what were the safety measures ensured by the boat-operator in such a situation. Not all passengers were with life-jackets.
It was clear from the on-set that this heavy boat would be very difficult to turn to its original position. The Drishti lifeguards rushed to the spot and tried their best to rescue all the tourists, but the rescue operation was going to be an arduous task. While the lifeguards managed to rescue seven of the passengers, three women continued to be trapped inside underwater. Some locals and water-sports operators came to assist, albeit in a non-professional manner creating a bit of confusion. Unfortunately the weight of the overturned boat and the machinery at disposal to both the coastal guards & Drishti lifeguards was making it very difficult to over turn the boat to its original-state. At least the government could provide fork-lifts managed by their professionally hired company to utilize in such incidents.
Later in the day I learnt that the boat-owner did not have the required licence to operate the boat in the first place. I was shocked beyond my wits. A non-licenced boat operator in broad daylight under the nose of the government authority is plying his services and no authority was vigilant enough to check. How many such water sports activities flourish in the State without licence or safety-security measures because of allegiance to politicians or sheer shirking of responsibility of those in authority?
The commonality between the Governments of Russia & India is that their citizens are just statistics to them. So I see no international furore happening at least from the Russian Embassy on the deaths of the three women. But it will have an impact on other foreign tourists and domestic tourists who will be extra cautious venturing into such water-sports activities.
Sadly, if we don’t fix this, the label in the coming years that will stick will be ‘Goa – the Tourist Death Capital of India’.
