The Indian Coast Guard Director-General Virender Singh Pathania on Saturday said that the presence of his force ensures that there is no influx of people from Sri Lanka amidst the crisis in the island country.
“Our presence ensures that there is no influx. So that is our basic role is to ensure deterrence, and if they still land up in shallow water channels then we just provide humanitarian assistance and then hand it over. With the ongoing situation, patrol is taking place and We have the hovercrafts which are typical to the Coast Guard mandate, these hovercrafts can even be deployed at short notice they have good speeds and they can be flown both over the sea and land. These are the best instruments and we have them,” Pathania told agencies.
He also lauded the Indian Coast Guard’s effort in rescuing 32 Bangladesh fishermen and said the increase in presence in the sea has reduced the time to respond to a distress call.
Further adding, “I have said that over a period of time we have been empowered so much I’ve got so many units, so my (ICG) presence at Sea has increased and my response time is reduced, but the ship cited them stranded on some of the wrecks of a boat which was broken, some were floating around and we picked them up and this was in three different occasions where the total number amounted to 32,” he said.
