Azerbaijan: get permission before going to the beach

The head of the executive branch of Baku, Eldar Azizov, offers to introduce an electronic reservation system for places on the beaches. 

That is, to get to the beach, people will have to pre-book a place using a special electronic system. In this way, officials hope to avoid crowding, reports 1news.

Bakuvians have received the news mainly with irony. No one, including the officials themselves, yet really understands how to technically implement this idea. The electronic system has not yet been developed, the nuances are not thought out. 

So, for example, in the vicinity of Baku, in addition to “regulated” paid beaches there are also free public beaches that nobody attends (unless there are lifeguards). These are the beaches that are generally especially crowded. And it is unclear how the authorities are going to control their visits.

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The administrator of one of the paid beaches, Amil Mammadov, liked Azizov’s idea.

“If an electronic permit system is introduced, we will be able to plan in advance how many people will arrive on a particular day and prevent a situation where the number of visitors exceeds the current limit,” he says.

According to Mammadov, their beach can accept from 1000 to 1500 people at a time.

MP Fazil Mustafa says such a system will create inconvenience, and it is better to simply monitor compliance with social distancing on the beaches.

“It’s easy to enforce local regulations. I think this is much easier than introducing a complex system of permits,” the MP said.

Usually the beach season in Azerbaijan officially opens in mid-June. But this year, this remains under question. Meanwhile, some citizens have already begun to travel to the sea.

The electronic permission system in Azerbaijan was “tested” during quarantine. People should have received SMS permission from the authorities to leave the house, while indicating the purpose of their exit. Permission was issued once a day, for 2-3 hours. But, despite this measure, there were a lot of people on the streets of Baku.