Unionists believe more people injured by urchins at Lung Mei Beach

Unionists believed that there were more people injured by urchins at Tai Po Lung Mei Beach, after the Leisure and Cultural Services Department received 90 injury reports in five days.

A total of 90 injury cases were reported within five days since the man-made beach opened on June 23.

Nick Wu Kai-wing, vice-president of Hong Kong and Kowloon Life Guards’ Union, said a beach requires at least 14 lifeguards to be on duty, yet there were only 10 lifeguards assigned to Lung Mei Beach.

Taking shift arrangement into account, there are only few lifeguards on duty everyday, Wu pointed out

He added that lifeguards may be distracted from checking on swimmers when treating wounded visitors as there were too many. They would also be too busy to report the injury cases.

Wu expected the actual number of injury cases is higher than that announced by the department.

Peter Li Siu-man, spokesperson of Save Lung Mei Alliance slammed the government for ignoring his warning that Lung Mei is not fit to be opened as a beach.

Li said it is difficult to manually clean up all the urchins. He also didn't rule out the possibility of other poisonous marine species showing up and endangering visitors to the beach.