Peo­ple go­ing to Man­zanil­la to bathe will be do­ing so at their own risk as all nine life­guards post­ed there have been trans­ferred to beach­es in the North Coast—To­co, Salybia and Matu­ra.

Their trans­fers are be­cause of re­pair work to be un­der­tak­en at the Man­zanil­la Re­sort.

Life­guards sta­tioned at Man­zanil­la ex­pressed frus­tra­tion af­ter re­ceiv­ing their let­ters of trans­fer ef­fec­tive yes­ter­day.

Life­guard Alvin Per­sad, who spoke on be­half of the nine life­guards at Man­zanil­la, told Guardian Me­dia that there were no no­tices from the Min­istry of Tourism that the Man­zanil­la Beach Re­sort would be of­fi­cial­ly closed.

He said the move would mean more mon­ey be­ing spent on trav­el­ling ex­pens­es.

“All life­guards have a fam­i­ly and chil­dren to send to school. Us­ing our lit­tle mon­ey to trav­el means less for gro­ceries, send­ing chil­dren to school and pay­ing our bills,” he said.

He not­ed that thou­sands of peo­ple jour­neyed to Man­zanil­la beach on week­ends and said re­mov­ing the life­guards will in­crease the dan­ger for bathers.

Red flags, he not­ed, will no longer be plant­ed be­cause of the life­guards’ ab­sence.

Mean­while, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, Dr Rai Rag­bir, un­der whose con­stituen­cy the Man­zanil­la beach falls vis­it­ed the af­fect­ed life­guards and said he saw no rea­son for the life­guards’ trans­fer as work will on­ly be done on the re­sort and oc­cu­pies a small part of the seafront.

Dr Rag­bir promised to raise the is­sue with the Min­is­ter of Tourism Ran­dall Mitchell to have the prob­lem ironed out.

Min­is­ter Mitchell has said the Man­zanil­la Beach re­sort is po­si­tioned in the di­rec­tion of the sea blast and that costs are ex­treme­ly high to main­tain.

He said the fa­cil­i­ty has suf­fered dam­age that needs to be re­paired.

“We un­der­stand that there are roof works and oth­er prob­lems to be done for beach se­cu­ri­ty and we have there­fore closed the fa­cil­i­ty for se­cu­ri­ty,” he added.

He said very short­ly they will re­quest ten­ders for the work with the aim of hav­ing the fa­cil­i­ty re­opened in the short­est pos­si­ble time­frame.

—With re­port­ing by

Ralph Ban­warie