The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) is going to recruit new trainers for the swimming pool where a teenager drowned on Tuesday, a senior official of the civic body said on Thursday.

The official said they would increase the number of trainers to 22, who will work in two shifts, at the pool. The pool has five trainers now.

Each batch in the morning and evening shifts has slots for learners and swimmers. Till Tuesday, every batch had five trainers who work in both the shifts, the official said.

The pool is open from 6-10am and 3-9pm every day, except Thursdays when it is shut for maintenance.

The swimming pool, opposite Mayukh Bhavan in Salt Lake, is a part of the Bidhannagar Municipal Sports Academy and is the biggest in Salt Lake. With 10 lanes, it is 50m long and 25m wide. The water is 8.5ft deep at the deep end and 3.5ft deep at the shallow end and is built according to Olympic swimming pool size standards, said a civic body official.

Aratrika Bhattacharjee, mayoral council member in charge of the sports department, said they would increase the number of trainers for each batch to at least seven, depending on the size of the batch and the number would go up to 11 in batches that have the most number of people in the pool.

“The batch sizes vary at the pool and when we have fewer people we will have at least seven trainers in the water while the number will increase to 11 when the pool is most crowded,” Bhattacharjee said.

According to her, the civic department will post an advertisement and recruit new trainers soon.

“The trainers themselves have to go through a test and those who know how to perform life-saving techniques will be given preference,” Bhattacharjee said.

This is being done so that the student-to-trainer ratio goes down considerably.

This newspaper had reported on Thursday that the BMC will also deploy four lifeguards who will be positioned around the pool during all batches. The lifeguards will be posted in the middle on both sides of the pool as well as at the deep and shallow ends of the swimming pool. They will be posted on elevated chairs so they can have a clear view of the pool at all times and can spot both swimmers who often wear no headgear and novices for whom it is mandatory to wear red caps at all times.

On Tuesday morning, Elina Dutta Bhattacharyaa, 15, a Class X student at New Town School died after she reportedly passed out while swimming underwater. Her mother Dalia was also in the same lane of the pool and had raised an alarm after her daughter did not come up to breathe.

“The trainers told us that she was a good swimmer and was training to increase her endurance level… We are probing the case from every angle,” said a police officer.