RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

Res­i­dents of Bar­rack­pore will gath­er on Sun­day evening for a can­dle­light vig­il in ho­n­our of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Saydee Jo­gie, whose life was trag­i­cal­ly cut short af­ter she was struck by a jet ski while on va­ca­tion in To­ba­go last Wednes­day.

The vig­il, or­gan­ised by the Be­liev­ers As­sem­bly Church and the Satya­narayan Hin­du Tem­ple in col­lab­o­ra­tion with vil­lagers, is ex­pect­ed to be­gin at 7 pm at the Cot­tage Road Junc­tion, Bar­rack­pore.

Par­tic­i­pants will then walk to the home of An­gel­i­ca’s fa­ther, Arnold Jo­gie, where a short in­ter­faith ser­vice will be held. Or­gan­is­ers are invit­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to at­tend and pay trib­ute to the young girl, de­scribed by loved ones as a “dear­ly de­part­ed princess.”

An­gel­i­ca died on Wednes­day af­ter the in­ci­dent at Pi­geon Point, To­ba­go, where she had been spend­ing the East­er hol­i­days with her fam­i­ly.

Re­ports in­di­cate that she was in­side a des­ig­nat­ed bathing area when a jet ski en­tered the re­strict­ed zone around 4.30 pm and struck her and rel­a­tives. De­spite the swift re­sponse of life­guards and by­standers, who ad­min­is­tered CPR at the scene, the child lat­er died at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. The op­er­a­tor of the jet ski re­port­ed­ly fled.

In a no­tice is­sued yes­ter­day, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s Di­vi­sion of En­vi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Re­silience and En­er­gy re­mind­ed the pub­lic that jet ski and per­son­al wa­ter­craft op­er­a­tions are not al­lowed in Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park, Buc­coo Reef Ma­rine Park, Buc­coo Beach and nearshore ar­eas.

The no­tice stat­ed that the re­stric­tion ap­plies to all op­er­a­tors, both com­mer­cial and pri­vate, and added that all ma­rine ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing reef tours, snorkelling, div­ing and glass-bot­tom boat op­er­a­tions, re­quire writ­ten ap­proval.

In a state­ment, Sec­re­tary of the Safe­ty Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go Hazel Mo­han-George ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to An­gel­i­ca’s fam­i­ly, de­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as a “pro­found hu­man tragedy” that has shak­en pub­lic con­fi­dence.

She said the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the child’s death point to a break­down in safe­ty sys­tems meant to sep­a­rate high-speed wa­ter­craft from bathers.

“Des­ig­nat­ed swim­ming zones ex­ist specif­i­cal­ly to pre­vent such in­ter­ac­tions. When these bound­aries are breached, the con­se­quences can be im­me­di­ate and dev­as­tat­ing,” the state­ment said.

The Coun­cil said such in­ci­dents are pre­ventable with prop­er risk man­age­ment, in­clud­ing stricter en­force­ment, ac­tive mon­i­tor­ing and clear op­er­a­tional stan­dards gov­ern­ing ma­rine recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties.

It al­so called for im­proved reg­u­la­tion of jet ski op­er­a­tors, in­clud­ing li­cens­ing, train­ing and ad­her­ence to des­ig­nat­ed zones.

Mo­han-George al­so high­light­ed the need for greater co­or­di­na­tion among reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing peak pe­ri­ods, as well as in­creased pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion on wa­ter safe­ty.

“The loss of a child in a pro­tect­ed bathing area must serve as a cat­a­lyst for strength­en­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works and reaf­firm­ing a na­tion­al com­mit­ment to safe­ty,” she said.