Baganara Resort to reopen today
Accident victim buried
Stabroek News
September 25, 2002
The Baganara Island Resort in the Essequibo, operated by Evergreen Adventures Incorporated, is scheduled to reopen today following its closure after an employee lost his life there in a recent boat accident.
Twenty-year-old Haimraj Ramkhellawan who died following an accident at the resort was laid to rest at Wakenaam Island on Monday.
The entire staff of the holiday resort travelled to Wakenaam for the service by means of the company's jet boats to pay their final respects to their colleague.
In a tribute to the deceased, manager of the resort, Ronald Thomas said that the enterprise had lost a worker who was loved, dedicated and willing.
He said that Ramkhellawan who also worked as a lifeguard had saved at least four persons who had found themselves in difficulty at the resort. His relationship with his colleagues was exemplary. The manager in his tearful farewell remarked that life without Ramkhellawan working there would never be the same.
An uncle of the deceased, Dahwar Latchmin Narine, known as Dinesh, related how he searched for the body of his nephew who was the same age as himself.
Narine told Stabroek News that his nephew had left earlier in the morning to tow a pontoon. Later he saw a crowd gathering where the platoon should have been moored. Suspecting that something was amiss, he ran over and learnt that his nephew had been thrown into the river after he had lost control of the boat he was piloting.
Several persons, the uncle recalled, had jumped overboard to search for the body of his nephew in the piranha-infested river.
After a futile search for about an hour, it was suggested that the services of a diver should be sought. However, just as the diver arrived, Narine who had continued to search for his nephew brought up the body from some 20 feet below. Narine related that there was a wound in the abdomen and the head had been partly decapitated.
Narine told this newspaper that there was a person on the pontoon at that time who witnessed the accident. That worker told him that his nephew's life could have been saved if he had not tried to regain control of the boat which had been circling after he had fallen out.
It is believed that Ramkhellawan was struck by the boat's propellers before the vessel ran into nearby bushes.
The resort then suspended all activities following the accident and undertook to bear all expenses for the funeral.