Divers have been roped in to stop drowning in the Ganga, but that sinking feeling is yet to vanish because of their late response.

The practice of patrolling and a defined base missing, divers barely come in help of people swept away by the Ganga water. The action mostly starts after people meet watery grave.

The district administration has 33 divers at its disposal at present. Belonging to the boatman community, they operate from home. They start for accident sites after receiving information about mishaps. By the time they reach the spot, victims allegedly die.

While a person unable to swim can survive for four minutes at the best in deep water, the average response time of the divers in the city limits is an hour. For suburbs, it is just the double.

The fallout of such a high response time of the divers is lethal in most of the drowning cases. On March 29, four persons aged between 20 and 24 met watery grave at Gai Ghat under Alamganj police station while offering prayers during the Chaiti Chhath festival.

On March 31, three school students drowned near the Janardhan Ghat while taking bath. The next day, two girls met a watery grave at Shivnar Ghat in the Mokama area in Patna district.

In all these incidents, the late arrival of the divers was a common complaint.

Collectorate Ghat. Telegraph picture

' Thirty-three men, most of them from the boatman community, help us in saving people from drowning. Each diver is paid Rs 244 for a job - rescuing a person or fishing out a body. They do not have any base and operate from their homes near the ghats. If any incident occurs, the divers are contacted by the administration on their cellphones and are given the required directions. At present, the administration does not have any provision for constant patrolling of the ghats ' Additional district magistrate, disaster management, Anirudh Kumar

The district administration manages 78 ghats at present. There are 48 ghats in Patna City division, 10 ghats in New Capital division and 20 in Bankipur division.

Additional district magistrate, disaster management, Anirudh Kumar told The Telegraph: “Thirty-three men, most of them from the boatman community, help us in saving people from drowning. Each diver is paid Rs 244 for a job — rescuing a person or fishing out a body. They do not have any base and operate from their homes near the ghats. If any incident occurs, the divers are contacted by the administration on their cellphones and are given the required directions. At present, the administration does not have any provision for constant patrolling of the ghats.”

The district administration officials told The Telegraph that ghats were patrolled during festivals like Chhath and Durga Puja. But incidents of drowning during Chhath or Chaiti Chhath are common.

Sources in the district administration suggested a major overhaul in the functioning of the divers.

“The administration is not very serious about this (drowning) problem. The only way out is round-the-clock patrolling of the ghats, which never happens. Also, the ghats are tendered to only during festivals like Chhath. They remain unattended the rest of the year,” an official said.

The situation is worse in other districts. “The divers are not well-trained there. Often our divers travel to other districts for rescuing people after accidents. Our men went to Katihar district last year for rescue work when a boat capsized. Our divers are overworked,” said Kumar.

In 2010, at least 17 policemen were trained as professional divers. But Patna could not get the service of any one of them.

“All of them were posted in other districts. This year, a proposal had come to train home guard jawans. But all the homeguards in the district are more than 35 years old. The divers should be aged between 25 and 35 years,” Kumar said.