A 30-YEAR-old Pakistani man drowned in the Paphos district at the weekend.
He was the area’s second drowning victim in a 24-hour period, police said.
Altaf Hafiz Nauman, who was a College student in Nicosia, was swimming near Aphrodite’s Rock on Sunday at around 3pm when the tragedy occurred.
According to reports, the young Pakistani and three friends had been swimming with masks when Nauman became separated from the group.
He was spotted floating unconscious by a Cypriot swimmer who pulled him out of the water and tried to resuscitate him.
The 30-year-old was rushed to Paphos General Hospital, where duty doctors pronounced him dead on arrival. An autopsy yesterday morning confirmed cause of death was drowning, police said.
The weekend’s tragic deaths brought the need for better warnings to the forefront, with local authorities locking horns over the issue on national radio yesterday.
Paphos district officer Andreas Christodoulides said people had to realise that they should only be swimming from beaches designated for swimmers by the Interior Ministry. Nevertheless, he said it was not the district office’s responsibility to police beaches or to seal them off from the public. Christodoulides said it was not possible to ban the public from swimming in the sea or to fence off dangerous beaches.
But Paphos Mayor Savvas Vergas said more had to be done to dissuade the public from using dangerous beaches and that fencing off an area could do just that.
He said by closing off a beach it would indicate to locals and tourists alike that there was something wrong with a beach and make them think twice about venturing into the water. Vergas said the summer period was almost at a close but that by next year a plan had to be put in place to avoid further tragedies like this weekend’s.
Meanwhile Central Foreshore Committee president Tassos Kouzoukos said the responsibility for taking measures to deal with the problem lay with everyone involved including the CFC, district offices and municipalities. He said one authority blaming the other for failing to do anything was not constructive and would do nothing to fix the problem.
