No qualified lifeguards at schools and hotels

by Kurulu Kariyakarawana

The lack of qualified lifeguards in many swimming pools at schools and hotels countrywide have posed a grave threat to untrained swimmers and this had been the chief reason for the increasing number of drowning accidents reported, experts said.

A spokesman for the Life Saving Association of Sri Lanka told the Sunday Observer that a recent study revealed that over 50 percent of the schools with swimming pools and over 75 percent of the tourist hotels had deployed lifeguards who were not suitably qualified.

It is alarming to note that most of the leading schools with swimming pools in Colombo had failed to employ a qualified lifeguard for students especially when training sessions are in progress.

Many five star hotels which boast of an excellent service had failed to adopt this vital safety measure for a long time, exposing guests to risks. In most cases, the pool attendants who were not qualified to rescue a drowning victim under international standards had been appointed as lifeguards.

About 10 students had drowned in school swimming pools during the past few years with the latest reported from a leading private school in Mount Lavinia, where a student from a Jaffna school drowned on the first day of the CHOGM Summit in Colombo.