The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Do amusement parks ride roughshod over safety?

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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Do amusement parks ride roughshod over safety?

Chennai Bureau

The industry is, of course, booming; fun lovers on the rise; but is there a scrupulous compliance with rules and regulations?

CHENNAI: It might be a thrilling feeling to come hurtling down a roller-coaster ride at 100 km an hour or ride the waves on a jet-ski at breakneck speed, but what makes amusement park rides so exhilarating also makes them so dangerous.

Rides can set your pulses racing when they work, but when they don’t, lives can be lost.

There is no question that the amusement park industry in Chennai is booming: the number of fun-seekers at the city’s parks rose by 15 per cent last year, with Chennai’s four big theme parks receiving close to 60 lakh visitors. There are, however, concerns over the lack of regulating park safety in light of recent accidents.

On January 16, an 11-year-old girl drowned while on a boat ride at Queensland Amusement Park near Poonamallee. This was not the first death in a Chennai amusement park: an employee at MGM Dizzee World on ECR was hit by a merry-go-round and died in April 2007, and a 6-year-old girl from Guduvancherry drowned in a swimming pool at Kishkintha in May 2006.

No regulatory mechanism

The culture of going to theme parks may be well-entrenched and more than a decade old in the city, but there is still no licensing or regulatory authority to evaluate safety in these parks. Until four years ago, there were no safety guidelines or standards for parks to follow in building safe rides.

The Bureau of Indian Standards introduced guidelines for structural safety in 2004, but there is still no enforcing agency to ensure that they are in place.

While parks have to obtain structural stability certificates on an annual basis from the Public Works Department, this is a common practice for most buildings and inspections are not carried out specifically to assess the safety of rides.

Sources say that even this basic certification is not strictly observed.

First aid facilities

Parks are also expected to offer full-fledged first aid facilities at the venue with a competent medical professional available on call, but the lack of regular monitoring by independent authorities means that this, too, is not enforced.

In countries such as the United States, parks are required to have safety certificates from independent agencies, and are also subjected to inspections by local government authorities.

V. G. P. Ravidas, President, Indian Association of Amusement Parks and Industries and Managing Director, VGP Universal Kingdom, says that while the IAAPI “encourages” member-parks to apply for certificates from international bodies such as the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and TUV SUD, a German certifying company, it cannot force them to do so.

Periodic process

“We need a fixed certifying authority as in the West to make inspections a regular and periodic process,” he says.

The lack of specific licensing for amusement parks also makes it harder for police to take action when accidents occur.

“Only when a license is issued for a specific purpose, we can suspend or seal the premises,” a senior officer said.

“Neither the police nor the fire and rescue services are empowered to take any action. The government is… examining the possibility of strengthening the laws.”

Safety measures

Amusement park-owners, however, say that their safety measures are more than adequate.

“We have a good safety team for daily maintenance,” Mr. Ravidas says.

“Each park has two to three hours of maintenance checks every day, on bearings and structural fencings, and we keep maintenance teams on alert.”

M.G.M. Rajan, Director of MGM Dizzee World, strikes a similar note. “We check the rides and take it on a dry run before offering it to the public,” he says.

“We also suspend all rides for 20 days every year for maintenance work and tests.”

While Mr. Rajan says that all of MGM’s rides are imported, he acknowledges that several Indian companies manufacture rides that are not of international standards.

No advanced technology

“We do not have the advanced technology needed to build such structures,” he says.

“It is impossible to make a roller coaster ride in India. If anybody says they do, then they are taking you for a ride.”

(With inputs from R.K. Radhakrishnan, Ananth Krishnan, K. Manikandan, R. Sujatha, L. Srikrishna and K. Lakshmi.)

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