The checks came in response to the incident involving a 26-year-old Chinese woman suffering a broken shin bone in a hard landing on the beach, attributed to a wind shift just as the woman and her male partner were coming in to land during a tandem ride.
The checks immediately followed a meeting at Karon Municipality yesterday to draft standard operating procedures for parasail operators to follow.
Pol Lt Gen Suraphong chaired the meeting. Also present at the meeting, and agreeing to the new safety procedures to be followed, were Phuket Police Commander Maj Gen Sinlert Sukhum and Karon Mayor Jadet Wicharasorn, as well as representatives from the Phuket Tourist Association, the Phuket Marine Office, the Phuket office of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM Phuket) and the head of the local lifeguards.
The result of the meeting saw several measures to improve parasail safety established, chief among them is for a ‘standard operating procedure (SOP) for operators to follow, and for random inspections of operators by officials from the Marine Office, DDPM-Phuket and police to ensure operators are complying with the measures.
Signs publicising how to safely use equipment are to be posted for tourists to understand, and operators are to comply with the conditions that ensure tourists are covered by insurance in case of injury.
Officials are also to hold ‘incident response rehearsals’ to improve the response to a tourist being injured at the beach.
In the incident involving the Chinese tourist last week, it took two hours for an ambulance to arrive, with the delay blamed on traffic.