The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) today conducted a Day at Sea’ event for children of fishing hamlets at Frazerganj in South 24 Parganas district, as part of its initiative for close interaction with the fishing community of coastal areas. Nineteen boys and girls of Frazerganj, a fishing harbour on Bay of Bengal coast at the southern tip of West Bengal, were provided a thrilling experience of travelling on board a hovercraft that had been brought in from the ICG base at Haldia for the joyride, official sources said here. The children, some of whom had seen a hovercraft but never been on one so far, were excited to be shown the cockpit area and be witness to the pilots operating the machine, an ICG spokesman said. The crew members of the Air Cushion Vehicle (technical name for hovercraft) tickled the curiosity of the young children by showing them various life saving and safety equipment on board. On culmination of the sortie, the children were explained as to how the Coast Guard carried out its duty of ensuring coastal security and how the fishing community stood to benefit by becoming the eyes and ears’ of security mechanism in the area. Inspector General Kuldeep Singh Sheoran, Coast Guard Commander at Regional Headquarters (North East) in Kolkata said that such outreach programmes were absolutely essential in the interests of coastal security. We have to take the fishing communities on board if we need to be effective. They need to be sensitised time and again of the role that they can play and be reminded that their families stand to gain as much as anyone else if the coastal areas are safe, he said. The outreach programme for the children is amongst a slew of events that the Coast Guard is conducting in the run up to the 41st Raising Day on February one.