Stop making excuses. Start staffing the beaches.

Opinion beachdeathsafety Stop making excuses. Start staffing the beaches. Beach Lifeguard Tower Summer Sea Vacation Holiday Tourism Cyprus 532993 Relevant News The same conversation about lifeguards, year after year 18 August 2026 Stop making excuses. Start staffing the beaches. 18 August 2026 The Republic of Cyprus needs constant defending, and constant renewal 18 August 2026 newsroom 18 August 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber Two 20-year-old girls went for a swim on a beach in Oroklini. They drowned. That beach has a lifeguard tower. It wasn’t staffed. A 34-year-old Israeli tourist drowned on a beach in Limassol. Last Saturday, a 35-year-old woman drowned on a beach in Larnaca, just gone 6:20pm, right after the lifeguard’s shift had ended. Four drownings in two months is a lot. At this point the problem isn’t just serious, it’s spiralling. And it’s infuriating. For one thing, these are human lives. For another, the people supposedly in charge have been talking about it for decades now. Every time one of these tragedies happens, we hear the same excuses. The same causes. The same cop-outs. And still the lives keep being lost. Young people. Parents leaving kids behind. Reading what officials had to say after the latest tragedy makes you angrier still. Not just because it’s glaringly obvious they’re waving the problem away, as if it were some routine inconvenience rather than people dying. But because they contradict themselves at every turn, carefully avoiding the actual substance of the problem. Take what one Interior Ministry official said yesterday: “The problem isn’t the number of approved lifeguard posts, which is more than enough, nor is it their pay. The problem is there simply aren’t enough candidates to staff the beaches.” Well, gentlemen, one of two things is happening here. Either it’s the short-term contracts you’re offering, with no path to permanence, or it’s the working conditions on the beaches that have lifeguards choosing swimming pools instead. You don’t need to be an expert to see the problem. And sure enough, that same official, after going round the houses for a while, eventually got to the real second issue: seasonal work. (Editor’s note: you’ve lost the thread, mate.) He explained that some of the lifeguards hired by district administrations are permanent. Others, though, work 10 months. Or 8. Or just 4. And then, as if by magic, came the grand “revelation”: “For 4 months, people aren’t exactly queuing up to take the job.” You don’t say, gentlemen. Not for 4 months, and not for 8 either. Who gives up steady work to take something that lasts a few months? Even someone desperate enough to do it for one summer will be job-hunting for something permanent by the next. And because the vague line about “some not being permanent” is designed to obscure the real scale of the problem rather than reveal it, the numbers speak for themselves. A second official, the head of beaches for the Larnaca district administration, put some figures on the table. Read them. That’s all you need. Only 10 of the 19 lifeguard towers in the Larnaca district are currently staffed. 31 people are employed: 11 permanent, 20 temporary. There are 44 approved temporary posts. They managed to fill 20. And then, with a level of honesty you have to admire, he comes out with this: “In previous years there was more interest, so we were able to staff more towers. The funding is there, the approved posts are there in far greater numbers, it’s just that, for whatever reason, nobody wants the job.” Larnaca isn’t even covering half its need for temporary lifeguards. Permanent staff currently make up just 35% of the workforce, and if every temporary post were filled, that figure would drop to a mere 21.5%. The picture in the other coastal districts is presumably no different. A child could work out what the actual problem is here. It’s the same thing we’ve been saying for years. Enough hot air, gentlemen. Rebuild the model from the ground up. It’s 2026. We cannot keep running this on a 1996 template. Make lifeguard jobs permanent. That’s the only way you’ll get people interested, and the only way you stop scrambling every single summer. Will it cost more? Let it cost more. Whatever it takes. We’re talking about lives here. Nothing matters more. And if there are a few months a year when lifeguards aren’t needed on the beach, find another use for them. Give them related work in the district administrations. Even running swimming lessons for children and adults. The old line that “people need to be careful too” is true enough. But the people in charge need to understand what the state is actually for. That’s precisely the state’s job: looking out for people in the moments they’re not careful. That’s part of the state’s responsibility. Finally, wake up. Cut the waffle. Enough counting tragedies. Subscribe to our Newsletter Latest News The same conversation about lifeguards, year after year The Republic of Cyprus needs constant defending, and constant renewal UK issues travel warning over fertility treatment in Cyprus after IVF donor scandal Things to do on Tuesday, August 18 Don’t let the killers off the hook How Cyprus fared at the 2026 European Athletics Championships Cyprus ranks first worldwide for video game firms per capita, report finds Follow en.philenews on Google News and be the first to know all the news about Cyprus and the world.