Mid-Day Opinion: Safety must be right on top of visarjan activities

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An artificial pond made for Ganesh immersion in Jogeshwari East became the site of tragedy, after a 19-year-old volunteer lost his life while he was in the water body.

Artificial ponds have been a fairly recent addition on the festival landscape. While eco-friendly immersions of idols are welcome at these water bodies, every effort must be taken to see that the site is safe and secure, posing no threat to volunteer/devotees.

First of all, these must be made with expertise, enrolling experts during the making stage itself. These are small, makeshift structures but they do have a compact stage/dais at times, at times they have a shamiana, lights, some announcement system and at times, music systems too.

All wires, electric equipment for any purpose at the site must be inspected and absolutely safe at installation time itself. The barricades must be strong as after a certain distance, there are barricades keeping devotees out and volunteers then take the idol into the ponds for immersion.

The announcer/organizers must be absolutely clear about what should be done in any emergency, the manner in which people need to evacuate the space if need be. They must also have a clear idea about who should announce and what exactly needs to be said.

This particular case needs to be investigated, compensation, accountability and most importantly the problem identified so that other artificial ponds do not have any such eventuality. This is an extremely grave occurrence and it must be seen as such, with hard lessons to be learnt.