An eight-year-old child’s death in a swimming pool inside a housing complex in New Town has shown that there are strict norms around any such facility that are hardly ever compiled with.
Any swimming pool should have a trainer and operational hours beyond which no one should be allowed into the pool, but most of the residential complexes find it difficult to abide by this.
Metro enquired across many housing societies in the city and administrators there were either not sure about the rules or were “under tremendous pressure” from the residents to tweak them.
The Urbana complex off Ruby, for example, has issued the residents guidelines on the use of pools that prohibits anyone from swimming unless the trainer is already in the pool.
“We face a lot of resistance from residents who say that we are overdoing things. But we stick to the norms,” said an official of Urbana housing.
Eight-and-a-half-year-old Mitakshi Bhowmick, who was unattended, drowned in the pool inside the housing complex last Saturday. She died in a hospital on Thursday.
Officials of the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) with more than 400 housing societies under their jurisdiction said they were planning to issue revised guidelines on the use and operation of swimming pools.
An NKDA official said they would issue an advisory to all the housing complexes and residents welfare associations (RWAs) that would have guidelines for “safe conduct around swimming pools”.
According to the official, all RWAs will be asked to employ trained lifeguards as well as trainers who will need to keep a watch at the pool whenever somebody is in the water.
Signage mentioning where the deep end of the pool is along with messages that children must be accompanied by an adult at all times must be displayed at multiple points around the pool.
NKDA chairman Debashis Den said apart from the advisory they were also planning to hold lifesaving training sessions at the gated communities for both residents as well as security guards. “It was an unfortunate incident and we want every housing society to be extremely careful about the swimming pools,” said Sen.
Many residential complexes cited financial constraints.
“Maintaining a swimming pool is an expensive affair. There is a recurring cost of water treatment. Keeping two trainers in multiple shifts is not always possible and at the same time convincing residents that they would not be allowed to use the pool in the second shift just because there is no trainer, if very difficult,” said a resident of a housing complex in Baghajatin.
Many feel Mitakshi could have been alive had there been a guard or an attendant at the pool side.
Housing societies like Diamond City West have prohibited training in the residential pool. “We are encouraging residents to use the pool only for leisure purposes. For training there are professional institutes. We will have lifeguards at the pool but their primary task would be to ensure the safety,” said Deepak Agarwal, secretary of Diamond City West. The pool at the housing will be opened after a gap of two years on Sunday, Agarwal said.
South City Residential Complex that has five swimming pools, three of which were operational as on Saturday, has a male and female trainer throughout the operational hours of the pool.
“We do not allow swimming in absence of the trainers,” an official added.
In the non-operational hours, the association has posted a security guard just to ensure that no one uses the pool when it is closed.
However, there are several other complexes where they find it difficult to recruit two trainers in multiple shifts.